A second batch of 17 beneficiaries of the Niger Delta Amnesty Program has arrived in Poland on a two-year training exercise, bringing to 29 the number of beneficiaries on Poland’s sponsorship.
Mr Niesioywski Przemyslaw, the Polish Ambassador to Nigeria, announced this on Wednesday in an interview in Abuja.
The first batch of 12 students that left for Poland in July this year is expected to rounding off its training in July 2012.
The students will undergo a two-year course in maritime education at the Polish Maritime Academy in Gdaniya.
Przemyslaw said the students, who are all males, were duly screened and carefully selected by the institute before they were given admission.
He recalled that 10 students out of the 22 students, who were in the first batch, were sent home “for lack of interest in their field of study’’.
The ambassador said that on completion of their studies, the beneficiaries would be awarded the “Officer of the Watch Certificate’’ a qualification, “which can enable them to practice in any maritime industry’’.
He said that a total of 200 students would benefit from the training, which would be done on a quarterly basis.
The ambassador listed other areas of partnership between Poland and Nigeria in the education sector to include linguistics.
“Polish students are studying Hausa language and West African cultures at the Warsaw University, while Nigerian PHD students are undergoing courses in linguistics.
“We intend to expand to other fields like social and management studies,’’ Przemyslaw said.
“Also, the Ahmadu Bello University and Silesia University are partnering in geology, and we hope to establish closer links between the Oron Maritime Academy and its Polish counterpart,’’ he added.
In a bid to boost cultural ties, the ambassador said that fashion designers from Nigeria and Poland would have a forum where “they can exchange ideas and experiment with each other’s indigenous fabrics’’.
Nigeria and Poland established diplomatic relations in the early 1960s.