Nearly 100,000 Nigerian students contribute £2b to UK economy
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Nearly 100,000 students left Nigeria to attend university in the United Kingdom between 2017 and 2022, underscoring the japa syndrome (exodus for better education and living abroad).
Data compiled by the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) shows Nigeria at 99,985 has the third highest number of students in the UK after China and India by the 2021/2022 academic session.
The yearly student enrolment data is broken down as follows:
- 2017/2018 – 10,685
- 2018/2019 – 10,810
- 2019/2020 – 13,020
- 2020/2021 – 21,305
- 2021/2022 – 44,195
SBM Intelligence has noted Nigerian students and their spouses contributed nearly £2 billion to the British economy in the 2021/2022 academic session, per reporting by Vanguard.
While many Nigerians – students and professionals – are still battling to relocate abroad, London is working on new restrictions on students bringing their relatives to study in UK universities.
_________________________________________________________________
Related articles:
Large Nigerian figures partly why UK banned foreign students’ relatives
Nigerian students pump nearly £2b into UK economy in one year
Nigerians qualify for UK jobs in Scale-up Visa scheme
__________________________________________________________________
$2.5b expenses of Nigerian students in UK help drain foreign reserves
Upsurge for UK study visa by Nigerians raised their spending to $2.5 billion a year which in turn has drained foreign reserves, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Godwin Emefiele disclosed in December 2022.
He said foreign exchange (forex) oil sales accruals into external reserves had dried up but the CBN introduced measures to boost forex earnings through non-oil export, which were yielding results.
“As we all know, for example, the official foreign exchange receipt from crude oil sales into our official reserves has dried up steadily from above $3.0bn monthly in 2014 to an absolute zero dollars today,” Emefiele explained at the 57th annual bankers dinner of the Charted Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) in Lagos.
“To put this drawback into perspective, it is equally no news that the number of student visa issued to Nigerians by the UK alone has increased from an annual average of about 8,000 visas as of 2020 to nearly 66,000 in 2022, which implies an eight-fold surge to about $2.5bn annually in study-related foreign exchange outflow to the UK alone.”
