Number of Nigerian students coming to UK increased five times – British Envoy

By Kazeem Ugbodaga

Richard Montgomery, British High Commissioner to Nigeria, has said the number of Nigerian students coming to the UK increased five fold in the last three years.

He spoke on Wednesday after he met with Vice President Kashim Shettima at the State House, Abuja.

“On the issue of student visas, I’ll also like to provide a context. The number of Nigerian students coming to the UK has increased five folds in the last three years.

“It’s a fantastic success story for our universities. And we are really delighted that so many Nigerians are coming to the UK,” Montgomery said.

He added that visa restrictions on foreign students from bringing their families to UK, was not targeted at Nigeria.

Montgomery said the decision was to protect UK infrastructure as the number of students bringing their family members from all around the world surged in the last couple of years.

According to him, last year, for example, the UK granted three million new visas, of which 325,000 of those visas were Nigerians.

He stated that Nigerian visitors constituted over 10 per cent of the people coming to London and the UK.

“The issue about restrictions on people bringing dependents, that’s partly not because of Nigeria but many parts of the world, many more students are trying to bring their dependents with them,” he said.

Montgomery explained that there are two issues here, the first of which is not always possible to find the housing and services to meet all the needs of all the existing student population and.

He said “secondly, we’ll have to manage our visitors’ number, we have to manage migration in and out of the UK just as the Nigerian Government does.”