Ben Carson Won’t Go To Africa Citing ‘Significant Security Concerns’

Ben Carson CNN Republican Presidential Debate, Las Vegas, America - 15 Dec 2015 (Rex Features via AP Images)
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Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson announced Thursday he will not travel to Africa at the end of the month as previously planned.

According to the Associated Press, the campaign has “significant security concerns” about the trip, which was expected to take Carson to Zambia, Nigeria and Kenya.

Carson had announced his trip earlier this month on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show and said it was meant to give him “firsthand” perspective on the geopolitical climate overseas.

“I think we need to make decisions based on real information as opposed to filtered information,” he said at the time, according to Politico.

Carson’s plan was to trace his ancestry from Kenya and Tanzania as well as visit a medical school named after him in Nigeria. Carson also told Hewitt at the time that he wanted to see what the effects of Boko Haram’s terrorism had been on Nigerians and their economy.

In recent weeks,however, Carson has struggled to stay ahead in polls. His campaign told the AP that canceling the trip was unrelated to that.

Carson also visited a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan as part of his effort to boost his foreign policy credentials. He came back with the opinion that the camp he visited was “really quite nice.”

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