UK made over N68bn off Nigerian visa applicants between 2023-2024

-

Between June 2023 and the same month in 2024, the British government earned over N68 billion from processing visas for Nigerian applicants.

Marc Owen, the Director of Visa, Status, and Information Services at the United Kingdom Visas and Immigration made this known at the launch of Africa’s biggest UK visa application centre (VAC) in Lagos on Thursday, November 28, 2024.

Owen revealed that no fewer than 225,000 visa applications from Nigeria were processed in the period under review.

“In the year to June 2024, we processed more than 225k UK visas for Nigerian nationals across all categories and this new partnership demonstrates our continued commitment to ensuring our visa services are accessible, efficient and meet the needs of all applicants,” Owen was quoted as saying by the British High Commission in Lagos.

“I’m delighted to be here in person as we celebrate this important moment together with our customers and partners.”

Though the Director didn't specify if certain classes of visas had more applicants, a standard UK visitor visa with six months duration costs $150.

In effect, the UK made over $34 million from the 225,000 Nigerian applicants. When converted to naira using the current exchange rate, the money would amount to approximately N68 billion.

Visa application fees are non-refundable whether or not the process turns out successful.

Nigeria has higher rejection rates

According to data from the British government earlier in the year, Nigeria ranked among five countries that experienced a rise in study visa rejection rates in the second half of 2023.

The Q4 2022 report revealed that one in 31 applicants from the West African country was rejected while in Q2 2023, about one in eight were declined.

Other countries with high UK visa rejection rates include Vietnam, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia, although as smaller accruals, with India the only country where declined application numbers trumped Nigeria’s.

The data further showed that visa approvals to Nigerians were down by 63% compared to the last three months of 2022.

The increase in rejections came as a result of tightened visa restrictions for immigrants by the UK authorities.


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Message Sent

Popular posts from this blog

Meet the world's hottest transgender - Amiyah Scott

-
Image
Yep, all that used to be male. Her name is Amiyah Scott, but she was born ‘Arthur Scott’ in New York in 1988. She's a transgender model and make-up artist. Arthur started the process of turning into a woman when he was 17. He got breast augmentation, booty shots, light filler in the cheeks etc etc.  by linda ikeji       
Read more

Man shot dead by police officer who tried to jump fuel queue in Lagos; police identifies officer responsible

-
Image
  A police officer has gunned down a Lagos resident who prevented him from jumping the queue to buy fuel at a Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) filling station at Obalende in the Ikoyi area of Lagos State.    Toheeb Eniafe was in the queue to get petrol on Wednesday evening, May 1, when two men, said to be police officers, attempted to drive into the station to buy petrol even though they were not in the queue to get the product.  This attempt by the police officers to jump the queue was met with stiff resistance from people in the queue who had been waiting for hours.   Eniafe was at the forefront of the resistance, telling the men to join the queue like everyone else.   This degenerated into a physical fight and one of the men shot Eniafe before fleeing the scene.  An angry mob was said to have chased and caught up with one of the officers but he later escaped after firing shots in the air.  On Thursday, May 2, the La...
Read more

Ugandan President Museveni claims IMF, World Bank and Western countries purposely keep African countries in perpetual poverty (video)

-
Image
President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has claimed that the West and various international monetary lenders keep Africa in continuous poverty. Speaking at the World Bank’s International Development Association summit for African Heads of state, held in Nairobi, Kenya, Museveni took a bold swipe at world leaders saying that most of Africa’s problems predicted over 60 years ago were a result of philosophical, ideological, and strategic economic mistakes. He claimed that a fundamental African problem is that aid from the World Bank and other Western bodies was majorly for profiteering. “The crisis which is in Africa today is because of philosophical, ideological, and strategic economic mistakes which we have been talking about since the 1960s. It is not an accident when you see the crisis in many African countries, the collapse of States. We predicted this in the 1960s – philosophical, ideological, and strategic mistakes. I don’t have time to amplify each one but I was very happy to hear the...
Read more