Chancellor Angela Merkel's first Nigeria visit on 14 July 2011 was the first by a sitting German head of government in over two decades. She was received at the Presidential Villa by Goodluck Jonathan, signed a Joint Declaration on Renewable Energy Cooperation (the technical basis for subsequent GIZ work on the Nigerian rural electrification programme), and held a press conference at which she described Nigeria as 'Germany's most important partner in Sub-Saharan Africa'. The Jos and Maiduguri Boko Haram attacks dominated the security file.
Her second visit on 31 August 2018 was the closing leg of a three-country West Africa tour (Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria) explicitly framed around the European migration crisis. With Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa she discussed the readmission of Nigerian asylum-seekers refused by Germany, the EU Trust Fund for Africa, and the expansion of the 'Skills Initiative for Africa' that placed Nigerian tertiary graduates in German vocational training. The visit also produced a controversial migration-readmission MOU that Nigerian civil-society organisations criticised as one-sided. Merkel left office in 2021 having visited Nigeria more often than any other German Chancellor in the country's history.