British High Commissioner Says UK New Visa Policy is Good for Nigeria

British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Richard Montgomery, says the UK Government’s new policy on the restriction of foreign student visas, is aimed at managing the pressure on social services for scholars.

Montgomery, who said this during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja, explained that the policy was not targeted at discouraging Nigerian students from studying in the UK. He urged Nigerians to see the new visa regime in the UK, in a bigger context, which he said is “really a positive for Nigeria and the United Kingdom.” He stated that, at the moment, Nigerians desiring to study in the UK have a 97 per cent visa approval rate.

He said, “Three years ago, there were 20,000 Nigerian students in British Higher Education Institutions, and last year, the number increased to 127,000. So, we had a five-fold increase in the number of students from Nigeria coming to UK universities”.

The envoy stated that, in 2022, “The UK granted three million new UK visas of various types, including students and other visitors. Nigerians alone received 325,000 of those three million visas. So more than 10 per cent of the visas from the UK, are to Nigerian citizens which is fantastic. It goes back to the fact that the UK and Nigeria have strong people-to-people links.”

“The policy change is about people who are doing non-research degrees coming to the UK as undergraduates, or for a one-year Master’s degree programme, and who decide to bring their dependents. He added that “We have had a very significant rise in the number of people coming from all around the world, not just from Nigeria. Sometimes it is difficult to find good accommodation as a student and there is real pressure on housing and social services for students”.

The envoy maintained that “If you looked at it three years ago, only 1,500 dependents of students were coming to the UK from Nigeria, but now it was 52,000 last year. Nigerians are very successful in acquiring visas. We have a 97 per cent approval rate and so that is the big context”.

He expressed the UK’s pride in its Research Institutes and Higher Education which, he said, were listed among the top hundred Universities in the world. He expressed the belief that Nigerians stand to gain massively from the international exposure and international networks offered by studying in the UK.