National Telescope national telescope newspaper
The United Kingdom issued 132,000 visas to Nigerians in the first half of the year, Jonny Baxter, British Deputy High Commissioner in Lagos, has said.
He revealed the number in an interview in Lagos weekend.
He however could not readily give the total number of applications received from Nigerians during the period.
“In the first half of the year, we granted approximately 132,000 visas, and those are all sorts of visas, which include visit, work and study visas.
“In the previous full year before that, we issued about 324,000. The UK, in that year, issued about three million visas, and of those three million visas, 324,000 were issued to Nigerians, which is about 10 per cent.
“If you think about Nigeria’s population, relative to the world, that’s actually a higher proportion of Nigerians taking up those visas and coming to the UK, which I view is a good thing.
“The UK has a huge number of Nigerian students in the country, and in terms of foreign students in the UK, Nigeria is second only to India.
“We welcome and value the many Nigerians that we have coming to the UK to study or settle, as long as they are coming through legal routes, and it is important that the country’s rules are followed and respected,” he said.
(NAN)
