49,498 Nigerian workers got UK work visas in five years — Report

The United Kingdom granted 49,498 work visas to Nigerians between 2021 and the first quarter of 2026, the latest official Home Office occupation visa data obtained by Sunday PUNCH shows.

The dominant grants went to the Nigerian health and care workers, and it is the second-highest total of any nationality granted UK work visas in the world.

According to the data, Nigerians submitted 54,707 work visa applications across the period, with a grant rate of 90.5 per cent, before the UK tightened its policy in 2024, which reduced Nigeria’s annual work visa grants from 28,495 in 2023 to just 2,851 across the whole of 2025.

The figures are drawn from two UK Home Office immigration datasets obtained by Sunday PUNCH covering 2021 to Q1 2026.

The datasets document work visa grants by occupation, industry, and nationality across the five-year span.

According to the data, the dominant route in Nigeria’s work visa outlook was the Health and Care Worker visa, which accounted for 42,893 of the 49,498 grants in the SOC2010 period alone.

Within that category, care workers and home carers received the most grants at 22,376, followed by nurses (9,359), senior care workers (4,267), medical practitioners (3,377), nursing auxiliaries (1,323), medical radiographers (763), and physiotherapists (699).

The Human Health and Social Work Activities industry absorbed 42,503 of Nigeria’s total work visa grants, representing 85.9 per cent.

Outside health, Nigeria’s Skilled Worker visa grants totalled 3,398 across the period.

The top non-health occupations were chartered and certified accountants (536), programmers and software development professionals (401), management consultants and business analysts (321), IT business analysts, architects and systems designers (287), and web designers and developers (73).

The Creative Worker route, covering musicians, actors, and entertainers, contributed 1,791 further grants.

The year-on-year data showed that Nigeria received 5,119 grants in 2021, rising to 14,084 in 2022 and peaking at 28,495 in 2023, a nearly six-fold increase over two years.

However, it slumped to 1,800 in Q1 2024 alone as restrictions took effect. The UK only granted 769 work visas in Q4 2024, followed by 895, 926, 593, and 437 across the four quarters of 2025, and 395 in Q1 2026.

The earlier surge was driven by the UK government’s 2022 expansion of the Health and Care Worker visa, which opened the route to care workers to address acute vacancies created by the COVID-19 pandemic and post-Brexit loss of European labour.

Nigeria was among the three most common countries of origin for migrant care workers arriving in 2022 and 2023, the report said.

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In 2023 alone, 146,000 Health and Care Worker visas were granted to applicants of all nationalities, making it the most popular skilled worker route.

However, Nigeria sits on the World Health Organisation’s red list of countries facing critical health worker shortages.

According to the report, it meant the UK’s National Health Service trusts are officially discouraged from directly recruiting there, even as individual applicants pursued the route independently.

The decline in visa grants began in late 2023 and accelerated in 2024 when the Home Office tightened sponsorship requirements, barred care workers from bringing dependants to the UK, raised the minimum salary threshold for skilled workers from £20,960 to £23,200, and later £38,700, and enforced compliance action against rogue care sector employers.

Health and Care Worker visa applications, which had peaked at 18,300 per month in August 2023, fell to 2,400 by March 2024.

Nigeria’s work visa applications dropped by approximately 68 per cent in 2024, falling from around 93,000 to 29,800, according to research firm Intelpoint’s 20-year analysis of UK visa data.

Among African nationalities, Nigeria led the work visa category across the same period.

Zimbabwe ranked second with 35,242 grants, driven largely by the same Health and Care Worker wave, followed by Ghana (20,649), South Africa (12,018), Kenya (6,520), Egypt (4,848), Uganda (2,480), Cameroon (2,122), Morocco (2,012), and Zambia (1,826).

Together, the top three African nationalities, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Ghana, accounted for 105,389 of the 144,364 total work visa grants issued to Africans, or 73 per cent of the total for the continent.

Globally, the UK issued 666,442 occupation-based work visa grants from 2021 to Q1 2024, of which 144,364 were granted to Africa, or 21.7 per cent.

India ranked the highest globally with 169,286 grants, representing 25.4 per cent of all grants, while Nigeria, with 49,498, accounted for 7.4 per cent.

Aside from Nigeria, the global top ten included Zimbabwe (35,242), Ukraine (32,154), the Philippines (29,697), Pakistan (28,983), Ghana (20,649), the United States (20,407), Kyrgyzstan (15,664), and Bangladesh (14,531).

The UK’s Health and Care Worker visa route, which makes up a major part of Nigeria’s work visa figures, was introduced as a subsection of the Skilled Worker route in 2021.

It offers reduced visa fees, faster processing, and exemption from the Immigration Health Surcharge for qualifying medical and care professionals.

According to the Home Office, by 2030, one in five UK residents will be over 65. It said this has triggered a National Health Service vacancy crisis and created a surge in the need for overseas-trained health professionals.