No fewer than 1,425 international students, including Nigerians, who gained admission to universities in the United Kingdom (UK), were denied entry at the country’s airports between 2021 and 2023.
A total of 161 Nigerians were affected, as they were deported upon arrival at airports around Britain.
According to data obtained exclusively from the UK Home Office under the Freedom of Information Act, India topped the list of affected international students with 644, accounting for 45 percent of the total, followed by Nigeria with 11.3%.
Ghana is third on the list with 92 (6.46 percent), while Bangladesh is fourth with 90 (6.32 percent).
However, the leaked data, which spans October 2021 to October 2023, only includes students who were denied admission at airports.
The Home Office did not also say the reasons for the removal of the foreign students.
However, Chronicle NG gathered that some of the reasons for such decisions 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.
Dele Olawanle, an immigration lawyer based in North London, UK, denounced student mistreatment in a September 2023 post on X, calling on the UK government to rein in Border Force officials who he claimed had turned themselves into admission officers.
Olawanle noted that three students sought him for assistance within three hours of receiving threats of deportation at the airports.
He wrote, “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.”
Nelly Okechukwu, a data analyst who claimed he narrowly escaped screening at one of the airports, also shared his experience.
He wrote, “After going through a 16-hour flight, a border officer asked for my transcript, which I presented, and this lady started asking me to tell her about a course I studied in my 200-level at the university. A university I graduated from since 2012.”
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) reported that 679,970 foreign students were admitted to UK universities for the 2021/2022 academic year.
Nigeria had the most foreign students, with 44,195 out of 68,320 African people studying in the UK during the 2021/2022 academic year.
HESA data also shows that the number of Nigerian students increased to 72,355 in the 2022/2023 academic year, with the explanation that the figure refers to students enrolled between August 1, 2022, and July 31, 2023.
According to SBM Intelligence, Nigerian students and their dependents in the UK contributed an estimated £1.9 billion to the country’s economy in a single year. The statistics covered the academic year 2021/2022.
