By David Kabiyesi
Trying times are here for Nigerian students in the United Kingdom after the newly-introduced naira devaluation by the Central Bank of Nigeria to unify the nation’s foreign exchange throws up tuition fees as well as rents overseas .
iwitnesslive.com impeccable source in London revealed that Nigerian students in the UK are set for what she described as darker days after tuition fees were jacked up by over 60 percent from this week after the naira fell from N471/dollar to N750/dollar and N589.4/pound to N957.2/pound.
According to our source, the student is groaning under the intense pressure of working extra hours to meet up with payment deadlines set by their respective schools and landlords who threaten to throw them into the streets if they failed to pay up house rents when due.
” Life in the UK is becoming extremely difficult for Nigerian students now that the Nigerian government has devalued the naira. The truth is that the naira devaluation has seen tuition fee skyrocket by 60% and most students will have to work extra hard to remain in school.
“Besides, it also means house rents will move up and I can tell you that some students now live in churches because they cannot afford house rents,” Taiwo Ronke Yusuf, a mother of four who resides in London told iwitnesslive.com
Statistics show that The UK is one of the destinations of choice for many Nigerians as 128,770 Nigerian students enrolled in universities in the United Kingdom between 2015 and 2022 according to data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency of the UK.
In a related report, The Punch reported that many of these students may now struggle to pay the balance of their tuition due to the sharp decline in the value of the naira
A Nigerian student at Liverpool John Moores University said the school withdrew his access to its portal following his failure to pay his 4,800 pounds tuition fee.
“The school has withdrawn my access to its platform. As a result, I can’t check the results of my last exam. Everything is done via the platform. I cannot also access my official email given by the school. I can’t attend both online and in-person classes again. It is very frustrating, I am completely shut out.”
“In fairness to the school, I was given several deadlines which I missed. I could not pay because I was unable to raise enough funds to buy foreign exchange. The exchange rate is very high,” he told The Punch.