The United Kingdom issued some 132,000 visas to Nigerians in the first half of the year, Jonny Baxter, British Deputy High Commissioner has said.
He also said his first few weeks in Nigeria has revealed the people as passionate, full of energy, and with entrepreneurial spirit.
“I have been here for three and a half weeks so I’m still very new. Nigeria has been an absolutely amazing place to be and as you will know, Nigeria, is well known to UK,’’ he said.
In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos yesterday Baxter, 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.
