At least 161 Nigerian students were denied entry into the United Kingdom between 2021 and 2023 after failing border checks.
The UK Home Office, in a release on Friday, said the Nigerian students were part of over 1,425 international students who gained admission to universities in the country but were denied entry at the country’s airports between the two years reviewed.
According to Home Office data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, India topped the list of affected foreign students with 644, representing 45 per cent of the figure, while Nigeria followed with 11.3 per cent. Ghana is third on the list with 92 (6.46 per cent), while Bangladesh is fourth with 90 (6.32 per cent).
The released data which covers October 2021 to October 2023, is limited to students denied entry at the airports but does not include international students deported by the Home Office for violating the terms of their visas, such as working beyond 20 hours weekly and academic malpractice.
Though thee Home Office did not specify the reasons for the removal of the foreign students, investigations have revealed that some of the reasons included the inability of students to convince the Border Force officers during checks at the airports, presentation of forged documents, and deficiency in English language usage.
An Nigerian immigration lawyer based in North London, Dele Olawanle, in a post on X, decried the maltreatment of Nigerian and other foreign students and called on the UK Government to rein in Border Force officers, whom he said had turned themselves to admission officers.
“UK border officers have turned themselves into university officials at the point of entry by questioning students entering the UK to start their course on some aspects of the course they are going to start. If they do not answer correctly, they have their visas cancelled, and some are removed from the UK. Sad! I have had three instructions on that in the last 24 hours.
“It is not their job because most of these students were interviewed by the university before being offered a place on the course. Most of these Border Force officers have not even been to university and are not qualified to examine these foreign students on their academic knowledge.
“I can say this as I have had dealings with them for the last 24 years. Their job is to make sure the students obtain entry clearance genuinely. If you are a student coming to start your course, be prepared for immigration officers turning themselves into university examiners,” Olawanle wrote.
The data also revealed that a total of 679,970 foreign students were admitted to UK universities for the 2021/2022 academic year, according to data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) with Nigeria having the highest number of foreign students with 44,195 out of the 68,320 African citizens studying in the UK for the 2021/2022 academic year.
The HESA data also shows that the number of students from Nigeria rose to 72,355 in the 2022/2023 academic year, with the explanation that the data relates to students enrolled between 1 August 2022 and 31 July 2023.
