6 Polish Students and a Lecturer Freed from Detention in Nigeria, Foreign Ministry in Warsaw Says

People wave Russian flags during a protest in Kaduna, Nigeria, Monday, Aug 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Ibrahim)

8:08 AM EDT, August 28, 2024

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Six Polish students and a lecturer from the Warsaw University who were detained in Nigeria during protests there have been released, the Polish foreign ministry said Wednesday. They are in good health and will be returning home this week.

The ministry’s spokesman, Pawel Wronski, said the seven Polish citizens have had their passports, laptops and belongings returned and were staying at the university campus in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, waiting for the trip back.

The seven were in northern Nigeria to take part in a program to study the Hausa language. They were detained earlier this month in the state of Kano during a political protest, allegedly for carrying Russian flags, Nigeria’s secret service said.

Officials in Poland, which has frosty relations with Russia, said that was unlikely and that the whole situation was a misunderstanding. The seven were held at a hotel in Kano while Warsaw was actively seeking their release.

“Our students were at the wrong time at the wrong place,” Wronski said, urging people to be cautious when traveling to distant locations.

Wronski said the ministry posts warnings and advice to travelers on its website, including a warning about the Nigerian state of Kano, where it described the political situation as being “quite complicated.”

Pro-Russian sentiment is rare in the Central European nation, which has bad memories of suffering under Russian rule in the past. Polish society is today deeply critical of Russian aggression in Ukraine and strongly backs Ukraine.

The protests in Nigeria saw thousands, mostly young people, rally against the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation and against alleged bad governance that has stifled development even though the country is a top oil producer.

In several northern states, a few protesters were seen waving Russian flags, a trend that until now was only common in Africa in coup-hit countries where pro-Russian sentiments are growing off the back of coups by militaries severing ties with the West.