British Embassy In Nigeria Accused Of Defrauding Nigerians Of Billions In Visa Fees

Jan 29, 2013 – British Embassy In Nigeria Accused Of Defrauding Nigerians Of Billions Of Naira In Visa Fees

Here is an interesting article culled from Global News Magazine on how thousands of Nigerians are defrauded daily of Billions of Naira in Visa fees by the British Embassy. naijagists.com

Though the officials of the British embassy in Nigeria are yet to respond to these allegations, we eagerly await their response on this thought provoking issue.

Read the detail report from Global News below:

Though the era of colonialism has gone, the British government through its embassy has perfected another way to colonize Nigerians and defraud them of money which runs into billions of naira and the strategy it uses is simple: it capitalizes on the desperation of Nigerians to travel abroad to extort money from them on a daily basis not minding whether the applicant is genuine or not.

Those who have fallen victims of this high-wired fraud narrated that the embassy without recourse to checking the applications, refused the visa on flimsy excuses that they do not possess all the necessary documents needed and that if granted the application there are no guarantees that they would come back to Nigeria.

According to one of the victims who occupies the post of assistant director in one of the multinational companies (names withheld), in the course of renewing his visa having travelled to UK on several occasions both on official and personal capacities and in his bid to apply for a two-year visa, he got the shock of his life when he was refused on the pretext that he wanted to run away from the county even when all his documents were genuine.

He narrated: “This thing is not funny. Having collected my N72,000, my application was refused and what pains me most was their claim that I wanted to run away. At my level why would I want to run away? To go and do what in the UK?” He said further that “this is not my first time of my going to the UK and my sin is just that I applied for a two-year visa.”

Another man, a businessman who was invited to attend an event in UK also got his application refused by the entry clearance officer who simply stated that the man did not know why he wanted to travel to UK even after attaching the invitation letter from the organization that invited him for the event.

He declared that it simply proved that they were not checking the applications again but just printed any refusal letter that suits the ECO (entry clearance officer) and the application fee paid gone down the drain.
Global News investigation shows that these two examples are just a few among millions of those Nigerians whose applications are refused without proper investigation by the British Embassy to ascertain whether the application is genuine or not and the status of the applicants, thereby treating every Nigerian like a criminal.

An expert disclosed that if the amount of money that Nigerians are losing to this daylight fraud and robbery is calculated, it would amount to several millions of naira on a daily basis considering the number applications being received every day from different VFS locations where they submit their applications.

Using these indices, if 1000 applicants are refused daily from the number of applications received on a daily basis (though more than this apply for a six month short term entry at a cost of N21,060), the total money generated on that day is N21,060,000 and in 22 working days it amounts to N463,320,000 and in one year it amount to N5,559,840,000 just for six-month applications refused.

For a long term visa for two years, the application fee is N72, 900 and also using the same 1000 applicants refused on a daily basis, the total money generated daily is N72,900,000 and in 22 days it amounts to N1,603,800,000 while in one year it amounts N192,456,869,000.

This fraud goes on and on depending on the type of application and other categories is as follows:

Long term valid up to 5 years…….N133,920 .00
Long term valid up to 10 years……N193, 320.00
And for settlement the application fee starts from N223, 020.00 to N499, 500.00

This is the chain used by the British Embassy defraud Nigerians of their hard earned.