Taking exception to the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu’s “Go to hell” rebuff to Canada’s refusal to grant visa requests of Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Christopher Musa, and other military chiefs, who wanted to attend an event in honour of war veterans in the country, the scenario demonstrated a larger picture of disdain which Nigerian passport suffers in the comity of nations.
Besides, the Nigeria-born Conservative Party Leader, Kemi Badenoch’s strivings to curry the favour of the Whites by upping her campaigns for British Prime Ministerial slot on stricter immigration policy of 15-year-wait before granting of British citizenship, a section of the media in early February reported that Donald Trump’s administration has put a stop to the US visa drop-box processing service in Nigeria.
Prefacing these developments is the exponential rise in the number of Nigerians, especially the Gen Zs and millennials who are eager to ‘Japa’. BBC reports that as of 2019, it was the wish of 29% of those between the ages of 18 and 35 to relocate abroad, but the figure increased to 69% from 2022, according to the survey of African Polling Institute. This is the driver of high number of visa requests for major destination countries such as the US, the UK, Canada, Europe, etc.
In the first quarter of 2024, Nigeria’s health minister, Muhammed Pate, announced that 16,000 doctors had emigrated in five years, with only about 55,000 still in the country. The university lecturers are also leaving in droves. “ASUU said that poor and delayed salaries, unpaid allowances, poor infrastructure, a lack of respect for the academic community and dwindling hope are some of the factors responsible for the resignation of lecturers across the country” in search of better opportunities abroad. So, the brain-drain in the academia and the health sector is in part feeding the ‘Japa’ syndrome.
The tripling and in some cases, quadrupling of visa applications led to the tightening of immigration rules and perhaps, the increment in visa fees by nations that are migration hotspots. But the cacophony of rejections by the foreign missions has become so high that they are perceived as a ploy to facilitate ‘reverse remittances.’ The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) notes that diaspora remittances processed through the International Money Transfer Operations stood at $4.22 billion between January and October 2024, a 61% rise from what it used to be in 2023. Records indicate that remittances from abroad are the second largest foreign exchange inflow, after crude oil earnings.
In broadening the conceptualization of ‘reverse remittances’, Valentina Mazzucato, notes that though overlooked in extant literature, “services conducted to help migrants to obtain documents to regularize their stays in the host country” or, to process applications for student visas or work visas for those in search of quality education and greener pastures constitute what is called ‘reverse remittances’ because the services are paid from the Global South to the Global North. Thus, while migrants repatriate part of their incomes to their low-and-middle-income relatives, and for individual investments in the home countries, the governments of top migrant-receiving countries in turn, expropriate intending migrants from the Global South through exorbitant charges for consular services and in some cases, qualifying examinations like the International English Language Testing System (IELTS).
Based on the prevailing exchange rate, it was calculated that the British government earned over N40 billion from the 225,000 visa applications, which Marc Owen, the Director of Visa, Status, and Information Services at the UK Visas and Immigration Office, Lagos, noted were processed between June 2023 and June 2024. And as the rate of rejections increase, those funds are lost permanently. Visa application fees are non-refundable and non-transferable. The soaring rejections for UK visa led to a significant student mobility to the US universities and colleges. According to the Open Doors Report on International Student Exchange, Nigerian has over 20,000 students in the US in 2023/24 session (13.5 percent higher than the previous year). Hence, 402,186 Nigerians are living in the US, according to a World Migration Report of 2024. Except for children that are charged $160, no other category of visa fee is less than $185. One can imagine how much the Yankee imperialists make from Nigeria, including the successful and many unsuccessful applications.
Schengen visa applicants also have unpalatable stories to tell. In 2023, Nigerians lost EUR 3.4 million (about N5.5 billion then) to rejected visa applications. The EU Observer Study revealed that EUR 130 million was netted from rejected applications in 2023 alone, and Africa and Asia bore 90% of the losses. Notwithstanding, the fee for Schengen visa was increased from EUR 80 to EUR 90 in June 2024. Marta Forest had to protest the economic injustice thus: “Visa inequality has very tangible consequences and the world’s poorest pay the price. You can think of the costs of rejected visas as ‘reverse remittances’, money flowing from poor to rich countries. We never hear about these costs when discussing aid or migration…”
Beyond visa fees, the IELTS examination is another discriminatory ambush to rip off Nigerians. Nigeria citizens perform better in English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) than most countries exempted by the UK Home Office. Yet the UK government refused to exclude Nigeria from the compulsory test for prospective students even after protests. The reason is not far-fetched. The International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) reported that “between 2016 and 2021, the UK government generated more than US$771 million from prospective Nigerian students and visa applicants who took the IELTS exam.” And the validity is just for two years while the much cheaper French language proficiency test, the DELF/DALF examination, is valid for life.
Nonetheless, more than 14 universities in the US, Canada and Australia have removed the discriminatory exams from Nigeria due to the efforts of great patriots like Dr Olumuyiwa Igbalajobi, Ebenezar Wikina, among others. Nigeria government must therefore, pursue aggressive diplomatic engagements to change the brazen neo-colonialism.