UK Money-Spinning Venture Rips Off Nigerian Visa Applicants - IELTS

THE photos of Tunde Omotoye, Fola Aina and Dipo Awojide are widely circulated on Twitter and LinkedIn as they were offered a one-year sponsorship deal with the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) as brand ambassadors. Their selection ticks off all the boxes for a model intellectual with a Gen Z fan base: Nigerian professionals in the diaspora with thousands of Twitter followers.

Awojide, a Senior Lecturer in Strategy at Nottingham Trent University, has over 900,000 followers on Twitter, while Aina is a Development Policy expert with over 113,000 followers.

And Omotoye, the co-founder of Humansquad, a Canada-based immigration tech startup, has over 327,000 followers on Twitter.

Brands and advertisers are attracted to influencers with high follower counts, especially on Twitter, because the more people influencers reach, the more money they make.

While Awojide and Omotoye had their contracts renewed from last year, Aina is a new entrant into the image-making enterprise of IELTS in Nigeria.

Their job description is simply to convince Nigerians seeking admission into universities or visa for jobs in European countries to take the IELTS tests and proffer strategies that project the brand in Nigeria.

While the brand ambassadors are paid to look at the positives of the IELTS, young Nigerians bear the brunt of its exorbitant charges.

The average cost of taking the IELTS test in Nigeria ranges from N83,000($200.5) for academic and general tests to N89,500 ($216.2) for UK Visas and Immigration tests.

This amount is twice the minimum wage of a worker in Nigeria, who earns N30,000 monthly.

Also, the shelflife of the IELTS test is two years.

IELTS is an English language proficiency test for non-native English speakers jointly managed by the British Council, IDP, IELTS Australia, and Cambridge Assessment English.

The tests are conducted multiple times a year and approved by United Kingdom Visas and Immigration(UKVI) for visa customers applying outside and inside the UK.

A Twitter user Olabayo Emmanuel who wrote the IELTS test in 2018, said he failed to gain admission into any of the schools as the validity of the test expired in 2020.

“I will never write that English language test again. I wrote in January 2018, and it expired (after two years) without having the opportunity to use it.

“English is our official language. I was taught in English right from primary school to university. These guys are cheats!!!” he said.

His reaction sums up the frustration of Nigerians who have made repeated calls faulting the IELTS test as being “exploitative” and “unfairly burdensome” for Nigerians.