Acting President Goodluck Jonathan will be in Washington to attend an international nuclear security summit and is expected to meet US President Barack Obama.
"We are making arrangements.... We leave on Sunday morning or Saturday night," the country's new foreign affairs minister, Odein Ajumogobia, told AFP.
"The purpose of the visit is the nuclear summit. On the side of that summit, the acting president will have a chance to meet with President Obama and to discuss matters of bilateral interests," he said.
Bilateral talks between the United States and Nigeria, its fifth largest source of oil, are expected to take place on the fringes of the summit.
Ajumogobia refused to disclose details of the bilateral agenda, but Jonathan on Thursday met the father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of attempting to blow up a US airliner on Christmas Day.
No details of the meeting between the two were released.
Abdulmutallab was arrested and accused of trying to detonate explosives sewn to his pants during a US-bound flight on December 25 last year, after which the United States placed Nigeria on its security blacklist.
The US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is due in Nigeria over the weekend for a conference on aviation security, organised by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the US embassy said Wednesday.
Jonathan has vowed that his new government will continue the policies of the former cabinet of President Umaru Yar'Adua, who has been ill with a heart condition since November.
On Monday Nigeria and the US launched a "strategic partnership" deal to bolster bilateral ties on energy, regional security and good governance, making Nigeria the first African nation to be afforded such a status under the Obama administration.
Nigeria is the United States' largest trading partner in sub-Saharan Africa, thanks in large part to its petroleum industry. Nigerian oil comprises eight percent of US imports, while about half of the oil produced in Nigeria goes to the United States.
Johnnie Carson, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said the new deal aims at helping Nigeria attain its full potential, including in the critically important area of petroleum, the country's greatest export.
It also will help provide stability in the volatile Niger Delta area where militant attacks have severely hampered oil production.
Obama hosts world leaders from April 12-13 for a nuclear security summit to discuss the prevention of acts of nuclear terrorism, and steps that can be taken to secure vulnerable nuclear materials.
"We support the principles that Obama has been promoting in trying to reduce nuclear proliferation," said Ajumogobia.
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