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I grew up believing that truly life was going to be all rose-coloured for Toluhi after all neithe...Read the full article.

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The laws of demand and supply at work. The British are fully
aware that there is a high demand for visas, not ‘tourist’ visas
but visas to enter and remain permanently, regardless of the
category of visa issued in the first place. We all know the Brits
will never pass an opportunity to make money and the high
number of visa applications, not only in Nigeria, gives them
a good reason for a price-hike and supporting financial penalties.

The cost of spouses visa has also gone up, from £80 to £250. It’s
a scam but as far as they are concerned it is legal.

As far as living in GB goes, almost everything is taxable.
Even our rubbish/trash has been earmarked and will be taxed.

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I wonder if these rules and fees apply in other countries.Remember 2 yrs ago,applicants btw 18-30 were denied visas to the UK.

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QUOTE:
He said he was fortunate not to have paid the application fee twice. I fumed ‘why?’!&$£#*, ‘Egbon calm down’ he said ‘Let me tell you this …… my friends wife had filled the forms on-line for herself and the kids and after she coughed out N208, 000 (£832) that was paid into the UK High Commission GT Bank account, she was given a number to register on-line and the process was so burdensome that it took her several visits to the bank and many days. After successfully filling the form, she went to book an appointment and there was nothing on the website to help. Meanwhile, the 30 days were slipping away and at the end, she finally got her form to their centre only to be told the huge sums of money she paid into the UK High Commission bank account at GT Bank has 'expired'! She thought it was a joke until she began to hear the tales of other many Nigerians who had fallen victims of the same scam, including her neighbour who had to pay twice too for their UK visas because the earlier fees paid 'expired'……… to be continued

END QUOTE

This is purely an adulterated scam being perpetuated by the British High Commission, if indeed all these are true. The fact that they set an expiration date does not make it legal to make either poor or rich Nigerians pay more than the allotted price. The British High Commission can never try something like this in Italy or any where in Europe, talk less in USA. It seems Nigerians are being scammed with complicity of Nigerian government. If Nigerian government is not complicit with it, why is there no complaint? A complaint should be file by the Nigerian government on behalf of its citizens with the British government. I am still shocked and appalled that Nigerians take this to be business as usual.

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=TEchi;181506>QUOTE:
He said he was fortunate not to have paid the application fee twice. I fumed ‘why?’!&$£#*, ‘Egbon calm down’ he said ‘Let me tell you this …… my friends wife had filled the forms on-line for herself and the kids and after she coughed out N208, 000 (£832) that was paid into the UK High Commission GT Bank account, she was given a number to register on-line and the process was so burdensome that it took her several visits to the bank and many days. After successfully filling the form, she went to book an appointment and there was nothing on the website to help. Meanwhile, the 30 days were slipping away and at the end, she finally got her form to their centre only to be told the huge sums of money she paid into the UK High Commission bank account at GT Bank has 'expired'! She thought it was a joke until she began to hear the tales of other many Nigerians who had fallen victims of the same scam, including her neighbour who had to pay twice too for their UK visas because the earlier fees paid 'expired'……… to be continued

END QUOTE

This is purely an adulterated scam being perpetuated by the British High Commission, if indeed all these are true. The fact that they set an expiration date does not make it legal to make either poor or rich Nigerians pay more than the allotted price. The British High Commission can never try something like this in Italy or any where in Europe, talk less in USA. It seems Nigerians are being scammed with complicity of Nigerian government. If Nigerian government is not complicit with it, why is there no complaint? A complaint should be file by the Nigerian government on behalf of its citizens with the British government. I am still shocked and appalled that Nigerians take this to be business as usual.

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The Nigerian embassy in the UK do the same thing it costs a lot to get a visa to go to Nigeria depending on what passport you hold ,the UK passport fee is different from the USA passport fee and you have to leave the passport and come back two ot three days later between a certain time and they are rude and very unprofessional so before we start throwing stones let us take care of our own back yard. I am not saying it is right but we should take the log in our own eye out before we take the one in our brother eye out ,and as i was told the last time i complained about the treatment at the Nigerian Embassy it is my choice to go to Nigeria , it is people's choice to come over here .:)

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“”Unfortunately, this was the same issue former Finance/Foreign Minister, our very distinguished Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was actually addressing before she was provoked into resigning her job in the last government and her successor never bothered to pursue the matter. Hopefully, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua will appoint a Foreign Affairs Minister who would ensure dignity for our people here at home before we even begin to talk of restoring our image abroad”.

- Olusegun Adeniyi – Thisdayonline

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=beambolla;181508> The Nigerian embassy in the UK do the same thing it costs a lot to get a visa to go to Nigeria depending on what passport you hold ,the UK passport fee is different from the USA passport fee and you have to leave the passport and come back two ot three days later between a certain time and they are rude and very unprofessional so before we start throwing stones let us take care of our own back yard. I am not saying it is right but we should take the log in our own eye out before we take the one in our brother eye out ,and as i was told the last time i complained about the treatment at the Nigerian Embassy it is my choice to go to Nigeria , it is people's choice to come over here .:)

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Thanks Beambolla for this posting. U beat me to it. The visas cost the same. All these people complaining haven't had the misfortune to apply for a visa in the uk.

These people have a choice, if u don't like the prices charged for UK visa, then stay at home.

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=beambolla;181508> The Nigerian embassy in the UK do the same thing it costs a lot to get a visa to go to Nigeria depending on what passport you hold ,the UK passport fee is different from the USA passport fee and you have to leave the passport and come back two ot three days later between a certain time and they are rude and very unprofessional so before we start throwing stones let us take care of our own back yard. I am not saying it is right but we should take the log in our own eye out before we take the one in our brother eye out ,and as i was told the last time i complained about the treatment at the Nigerian Embassy it is my choice to go to Nigeria , it is people's choice to come over here .:)

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Beambolla:

So what you are saying is that the British High Commission is perpetrating the same scam the Nigerian government is dishing out to its poor hapless citizens? And you saying our government are complicit to the scam and that is why everything is business as usual? This is so very unfortunate. But I bet you, the Nigerian Embassy or Consulate in London does not charge any British Caucasian exorbitant fees for visa to travel to Nigeria. They are usually too happy to have them travel down there to bother with the usual fees being levied on Nigerians.

I have both US and Nigerian passports. It seems I have yet to encounter the exorbitant fees you are talking about. May be it is not done in Nigerian Consulate here in the US. My Nigerian passport is not due to expire until 2011, just as my America passport. I suppose I have been fortunate in this regard.

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I think Segun Adeniyi had written about the same scam in his column which I would re-produce below: This whole scenario is really sad, sad, sad,

Thisday Newspaper


The Scam in UK Visa Process
The Verdict According to Olusegun Adeniyi Tel. & Email : 08055001980, olusegunadeniyi@thisdayonline.com, 05.30.2007

The 1974 publication, Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor, by Garrett Hardin, a trained ecologist and microbiologist, remains one of the most controversial theses on development and while it has been condemned by several scholars, I am of the firm conviction that every country has a right to guard jealously its own resources and should not, out of benevolence, open its door to all comers to the detriment of its own nationals.
Because of my position on the issue, I have over the years refrained from being critical of the visa process in many of the foreign missions in Nigeria, even when some of these processes are sometimes designed to humiliate our people. My response has always been that Nigerians must stay at home to build our own country and until we do that, we cannot demand respect from other people.
With the economic downturn and decay of virtually all our institutions, many otherwise young and promising Nigerians have in the last two decades developed the refugee mentality, with a desperation to flee the country for just anywhere based on the notion that the grass is greener on the other side. Yet, as I said, I share Hardin's sentiment that rich countries should not just play Father Christmas to people from countries whose leaders have mismanaged their own affairs as has been our lot in Nigeria and many other African countries.
In using the metaphor of the earth as a 'spaceship' to analyse the different options that are available to rich countries in dealing with how to respond to poverty and population explosion against the backdrop of dwindling resources, Hardin, perhaps unwittingly, provided insight into why foreign embassies behave the way they do to visa applicants in Nigeria--by bringing to light a variety of ethical dilemmas that developed societies face in dealing with people from developing countries. Hardin asked readers to imagine that the world is a sea of lifeboats and that "each rich nation amounts to a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people". On the other hand, the poorer countries have relatively smaller and more crowded lifeboats, from which many eventually fall overboard. The ethical dilemma he raised is: how should the rich people in the lifeboats react to the poorer countries' citizens swimming about in the ocean asking to be admitted into the rich countries boats?

"So here we sit, say 50 people in our lifeboat. To be generous, let us assume it has room for 10 more, making a total capacity of 60. Suppose the 50 of us in the lifeboat see 100 others swimming in the water outside, begging for admission to our boat or for handouts. We have several options: we may be tempted to try to live by the Christian ideal of being 'our brother's keeper,' or by the Marxist ideal of 'to each according to his needs.'"
For the rational person, the first reflex would be to allow into the lifeboat the desperate people swimming for their lives and share with them the available space. But this, Hardin argues, does not come without disastrous consequences. "Since the needs of all in the water are the same, and since they can all be seen as 'our brothers,' we could take them all into our boat, making a total of 150 in a boat designed for 60. The boat swamps, everyone drowns. Complete justice, complete catastrophe."
But there is also option two: "Since the boat has an unused excess capacity of 10 more passengers, we could admit just 10 more to it. But which 10 do we let in? How do we choose? Do we pick the best 10, 'first come, first served'? And what do we say to the 90 we exclude? If we do let an extra 10 into our lifeboat, we will have lost our 'safety factor,' an engineering principle of critical importance."
Hardin concluded with his own position which has been condemned as immoral: "Suppose we decide to preserve our small safety factor and admit no more to the lifeboat. Our survival is then possible although we shall have to be constantly on guard against boarding parties. While this last solution clearly offers the only means of our survival, it is morally abhorrent to many people. Some say they feel guilty about their good luck. My reply is simple: 'Get out and yield your place to others.'

"This may solve the problem of the guilt-ridden person's conscience, but it does not change the ethics of the lifeboat. The needy person to whom the guilt-ridden person yields his place will not himself feel guilty about his good luck. If he did, he would not climb aboard. The net result of conscience-stricken people giving up their unjustly held seats is the elimination of that sort of conscience from the lifeboat."

I apologise if my piece sounds like a boring tutorial on development--and I had actually used the illustration before in an earlier piece--but the foregoing background is just to buttress my point as to why foreign embassies are not always receptive to giving our people visas to travel to their home countries. The first instinct, quite naturally, is self-preservation for their own people. This, however, does not justify what is currently happening at the British High Commission where the visa process has been turned into a money spinner and a big scam to the detriment of our people. Effective April 1 this year, a new regime of visa fees was introduced with Multiple visa applicant paying N52,000; Single entry applicant (six month) paying N16,400 and Transit applicant paying N11,450. All visa fees and charges are applicable both for adults as well as children and, according to them, "not refundable under any circumstances". But there is another snag: Fees once paid into their GTBank account would only be valid for 30 days!

Ordinarily, completing an application form should not take a month or so you would imagine but that is where the problem begins. According to their website, the UK Visa Application Centres are officially authorised by the British High Commission in Nigeria to accept applications for all categories of visas. You are also advised to "take an appointment for visiting your nearest UK Visa Application Centre to turn in your application. This will help you significantly reduce waiting time as you will be assigned to a 'Priority' queue.

"Applicants can also visit an Application Centre without an appointment. Such applicants will be assigned to a regular queue. Please note that the number of applicants allowed into the regular queue may be restricted during peak periods for sake of crowd control. We strongly recommend that you visit an Application Centre by prior appointment, saving you unnecessary waiting time. You will particularly value the appointment facility during the peak season when long queues may be an occurrence."

After my wife had filled the forms on-line for herself and the kids and after coughing out N208,000, paid into the UK High Commission GTBank account, she was given a number to register on-line. Anybody who has ever done on-line registration knows the bottlenecks that often arise yet until you complete all the sections, the application is not made. That process is so cumbersome that it may take you several visits to the bank and many days. After you successfully filled the form, you want to book an appointment and there is nothing on the website to help. Meanwhile, the days are counting and at the end, you finally get your form to their centre only to be told the huge sums of money you paid into GTBank, money that has hit the account of the UK High Commission, and probably already remitted to their country (we hear they use money from Nigeria to run their Home Office) has 'expired'!

When Glitterati Editor, Moses Jolayemi, formerly our Foreign/Diplomatic Editor, (to whom I had handed the passports of my family and payment vouchers) to help submit at the High Commission told me the money I paid had 'expired' and that I would have to pay fresh amount, I thought it was a joke. Until I began to hear the tales of several other Nigerians who had fallen victims of this scam, including my colleagues, Yusuph Olaniyonu and Eddy Odivwri who had to pay twice for their UK visas because the earlier fees paid 'expired'.
I am already discussing with some lawyers as to how to retrieve my money from the British High Commission. But the issue here is very clear: while every country has the right to decide the process through which visitors must enter their shores, it is high time our government tackled the disrespect to which Nigerians are being subjected right on our own shores. Unfortunately, this was the same issue former Finance/Foreign Minister, our very distinguished Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was actually addressing before she was provoked into resigning her job in the last government and her successor never bothered to pursue the matter. Hopefully, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua will appoint a Foreign Affairs Minister who would ensure dignity for our people here at home before we even begin to talk of restoring our image abroad.

There are other issues: The Visa fees being charged by many foreign embassies in Nigeria are higher than what they charge in other countries. What they are simply doing is taking advantage of the desperation of our people, especially when these fees are non-refundable and many applicants would still be turned down. If the fees were to be paid after a successful application, as it is done in some countries, it would not have mattered. But the real issue now is this 30-day '419' in which money duly received by the British High Commission would 'expire' in their GTBank account!
That sort of nonsense is unacceptable. And it has to stop.

Response From Sir Richard Gozney, KCMG, the British High Commissioner in Nigeria


Dear Editor of THISDAY

When a Director of one of Nigeria's most prestigious newspapers slates the British High Commission, as did Olusegun Adeniyi on 31 May in THISDAY, I need to reply and to try to explain what we are doing.

The UK Visa operation in Nigeria is one of the UK's biggest and busiest in the world. We take all complaints seriously.

Since March 2006 UK Visa customers in Nigeria have been able to lodge their applications at one of 5 Visa Application Centres operated by our commercial partner VFS. Each Visa Application Centre has a GT Bank facility where customers can pay their visa fees. Many of our customers prefer this one-stop-shop arrangement where they are dealt with on a first-come, first-served basis. For those customers who wish to save time when they attend a Visa Application Centre we offer a pre-payment facility which allows them to pay their visa fees up to 30 days in advance at any one of a network of GT Bank branches throughout the country. They can also make an appointment to visit a Visa Application Centre via the VFS website. Both the VFS website and the visa fee deposit slip make it clear that the fee receipt is valid for 30 days from date of payment.

Why 30 days? We operate to stringent accounting procedures and do not wish to hold unaccounted for funds on our books for longer than necessary. At the same time we need to avoid where possible having to arrange refunds - a time-consuming process for staff and customers alike. And it is fair to say that most people prefer not to leave their money in someone else's bank account for any longer than necessary. So we decided on a period of 30 days which we believed was sufficient time to enable customers to pay in advance and then complete all the procedures. This has proved to be the case for the overwhelming majority of customers who have taken advantage of the pre-payment facility since it was introduced in March 2006.

Sometimes customers have difficulty in accessing the on-line facility - internet connectivity cannot always be depended upon - and are instead obliged to attend the Visa Application Center in good time without an appointment. We will look at our website again to see if we should not make this option clearer. We shall also make it clear, in a new decision prompted by Olusegun Adeniyi's experiences, that if an applicant pays at GT Bank in advance but then explains to us by e-mail that they cannot make the application online (info@ukvac-ng.com or visa-lagos@fco.gov.uk) and does so before 30 days are up, we will refund the money.

On a separate point the UK's visa fees are standard around the globe and Nigerian customers are in no way discriminated against.

Since March 2006 we have processed over 300,000 UK visa applications in Nigeria. We conduct regular customer surveys and the most recent one indicated a 97% satisfaction rating. We shall continue to try to satisfy the 3% who are unhappy, Mr Olusegun Adeniyi and his wife among them.

It is unfortunate that circumstances conspired against Mr Adeniyi when his family applied for a visa earlier this year.† But at least their experience has prompted us to look again at one aspect of our visa process.

Your Sincerely,

Richard Gozney


SIR RICHARD GOZNEY

See the actual

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I have both US and Nigerian passports. It seems I have yet to encounter the exorbitant fees you are talking about. May be it is not done in Nigerian Consulate here in the US. My Nigerian passport is not due to expire until 2011, just as my America passport. I suppose I have been fortunate in this regard.


Dear TEchi

i have underlined your answer you have a nigerian passport some people who yes are nigerians by birth to one or two nigerian parents do not ,for example my daughter has both a US passport and a UK passport she then gets charge anyway she goes through the
Nigerian Embassy in the UK, And yes it happens in US too without being too noisy where actually where you born? that may answer your question if you were born in Nigeria then you are a Nigerian you US passport will say place of birth Nigeria that is quite different to some of us that dwere not lucky to have been born in Nigeria i am not saying one is right and one is wrong i am just stating the facts as i know them since i have been at the recieving end of Nigerians being very very rude at the Embassy both in the UK and in the US the Nigerian Embassy in Washington DC on 19st, maybe it has moved now but the ugly green and white buliding there were located in before the people were terrible rude and very unprofessional one of them even was talking about me without realising i did understand yoruba .