New agreement removes key ID hurdle and paves way for mass deportations, including visa overstayers and convicted foreign national offenders — but start date, financial terms and safeguards remain unclear.
Nigeria and the United Kingdom have signed a controversial new removal agreement that could see thousands of failed asylum seekers, visa overstayers and convicted foreign national offenders returned to Nigeria amid President Bola Tinubu’s state visit to London.
The deal was signed on Thursday by Nigeria’s interior minister, Olubunmi Tunji‑Ojo, and UK home secretary Shabana Mahmood, the Home Office confirmed. British ministers say the agreement gives the UK wide flexibility to accelerate deportations — a move likely to produce large-scale removals once logistical and legal arrangements are finalised.
A major change in the new pact is Nigeria’s willingness, for the first time, to accept UK “letters” — alternative identification certificates issued by British authorities to people without valid passports to facilitate their return. The Home Office said accepting UK letters removes “one of the major administrative hurdles” that has long blocked forced returns.
The deal also explicitly covers visa overstayers and appears to expand the scope for returning Nigerians who have exhausted asylum appeals. According to published figures, there are currently about 961 Nigerian failed asylum seekers in the UK who have exhausted their rights of appeal and 1,110 Nigerian foreign national offenders whom the Home Office is seeking to deport — groups that could now face expedited removal.
“We owe everyone across the system fairness,” said Alex Norris, UK minister for border security and asylum, adding: “Anyone who abuses our systems, breaks our laws or tries to cheat their way into Britain will be stopped and removed.”
Nigeria’s interior minister framed the agreement as evidence of the country’s commitment to cooperating with international partners. “We are totally committed to being a responsible country in fulfilling our core obligations,” Olubunmi Tunji‑Ojo said, warning potential migrants that “he who comes to equity must come with clean hands.”
Joint operations, data sharing on criminal networks and a new “fusion cell” intelligence model were also agreed. The fusion cell — to bring together government agencies, banks, tech firms and communications companies — is intended to rapidly identify and disrupt criminal gangs exploiting visa routes, including fake job sponsorships, sham marriages and forged documents. UK officials said the partnership will also target online frauds such as romance scams, investment fraud and cryptocurrency scams that have harmed British victims.
The Home Office said Nigeria has agreed to review its laws to impose tougher sentences for those convicted of immigration‑related offences and to step up prosecutions of facilitators who run sham schemes. Details on when the agreement will take effect, how long it will run, whether payment or other incentives will be involved, and whether the deal covers nationals of other countries travelling from or via Nigeria were not disclosed.
The pact comes against the backdrop of previous UK attempts to relocate asylum seekers abroad. In 2022 the UK struck a high‑profile agreement with Rwanda, including a reported payment of at least £370 million, but that scheme collapsed after legal and political challenges and was later described by the British prime minister as “dead.”
Human rights advocates and legal observers have in the past criticised similar arrangements, raising concerns about due process, the safety of returned migrants and the potential for returns to be stalled by legal challenges. The Home Office statement did not say what safeguards will be in place to protect vulnerable individuals, nor how appeals or medical and protection needs will be handled in practice.
For now the timing and scale of removals remain uncertain, but UK ministers made plain their intention to use the new tools to speed up removals and to disrupt the criminal networks behind migration fraud. With administrative barriers lowered, tens — and potentially thousands — of Nigerians who have exhausted UK remedies may now face expedited deportation to a country that has signalled tougher enforcement and penalties for immigration crimes.
