Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, visited Nigeria on Friday to promote the Invictus Games, the sporting event the prince founded for war veterans.
The couple arrived in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, on Friday, where they visited a school to launch an event on youth mental health.
Welcomed by a group of Igbo dancers and drummers, Prince Harry and Meghan visited Lightway Academy, where they were greeted by students.
“If you take just one thing from today, it’s that mental health affects everyone,” Prince Harry told the students. “The more we talk about it, the more we can reduce the stigma.”
Meghan joined the Duke of Sussex on stage before heading to a meeting with military officials to discuss the Invictus Games.
Nigeria will become a member of the Games in 2022.
The next matches are scheduled to be held in February 2025 in Vancouver, Canada.
Student Nina Edeh (13 years old) told AFP: “It was really amazing. I just wanted to touch him,” adding that she was “inspired” by the encounter when the prince left school.
Prince Harry was in London on Wednesday to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Games. Like all of his trips to the UK since moving to the US in 2020, his visit sparked further speculation about a reconciliation with his family.
Harry, a former army captain who served as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan, founded the Invictus Games in 2014. It has since evolved to promote the reintegration of veterans through sport.
Last year, former Nigerian soldier peacemaker Azewegbulam, who lost his leg fighting Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, became the first African to win a gold medal at the Olympics in Germany.
The Nigerian army said on Thursday that the prince will participate in a sporting event in the capital and will also travel to Kaduna in the country’s northwest to visit a military hospital and speak with soldiers injured in combat.
He will then travel to Lagos, the country’s economic and cultural capital.
The Nigerian Armed Forces are fighting armed groups on several fronts.
The jihadist insurgency has been raging since 2009 in the northeast of the country, killing more than 40,000 people and displacing two million people.
In the northwestern and central states, heavily armed criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, carry out mass kidnappings for ransom, attacking and looting villages.
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