Richard Montgomery, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria said that the United Kingdom’s (UK) decision to prohibit foreign students from bringing dependents with them beginning in 2024 is not aimed at Nigerians, but rather at protecting UK infrastructure, as the number of students bringing family members from all over the world has increased in recent years.
The British High Commissioner made the remarks on Wednesday after meeting with Vice President Kashim Shettima at the State House in Abuja.
He conceded that the number of Nigerian students studying in the UK had increased fivefold in three years, as had the overall number of international students.
Montgomery noted that, while this is a “fantastic success story for our universities,” finding homes and services for the large number of people coming to the UK with their families is not always practical.
“Last year (2022), for example, the UK granted three million new visas, of which 325,000 of those visas were Nigerians. So, Nigerian visitors constitute over 10 per cent of the people coming to London and the UK.
“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.
“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.
“There are two issues here: the first is – it’s not always possible to find the housing and services to meet all the needs of all our existing student population and 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.”
