Nigeria ECOs blasted by inspectors

By On 15 October 2009 · 6 Comments · In News, OCIUKBA
John Vine

John Vine

A tad sensationalist, I know, but true enough, you will find. The Chief Inspector of UKBA, John Vine, just published his report on the UKBA visa operation at Abuja. The findings are that the operation is poor:

  • The ‘service’ represents poor value for money for customers. High fees are paid but refusal notices are repetitive, poorly written, unbalanced and poorly presented.
  • The information available to potential visa applicants is confusing, can be inconsistent and needlessly has to be sourced from multiple websites. This leads to unnecessary refusals.
  • The quality of information recording was found to be very poor indeed. The inspectors attempted to look at a sample of 100 files but by the time incorrectly referenced and lost files were eliminated, there were only 64 files in the sample.
  • The quality of decision making was found to be poor on all the measures used. 11% of cases showed ‘wholly unreasonable’ judgment by ECOs and 31% of the sample were deficient in some way.
  • Entry Clearance Manager oversight was inadequate, as was complaint handling. There is therefore little or no feedback to ECOs to improve standards.

The report is written in a very balanced and impartial manner and the conclusions are well supported and, when it comes down to it, incontrovertible. At the time of writing there is no UKBA response to the report, unlike for previous inspectorate reports. The silence is perhaps telling.

None of the above comes as news to immigration lawyers or to the unfortunate applicants who have had to apply to Abuja. However, I suspect that the most telling point made in the report is the criticism of poor value for money. It isn’t said anywhere in the report, but the idea of a ‘customer’ has yet to sink in at UKBA, despite the large fees now paid for the cursory examination applications get at the hands of ECOs. Perhaps these inspection reports will slowly begin to shift this attitude.

 
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6 Responses to Nigeria ECOs blasted by inspectors

  1. Mr T says:
    16 October 2009 at 9:50 am

    “The quality of decision making was found to be poor on all the measures used. 11% of cases showed ‘wholly unreasonable’ judgment by ECOs and 31% of the sample were deficient in some way.”
    “Entry Clearance Manager oversight was inadequate, as was complaint handling. There is therefore little or no feedback to ECOs to improve standards.”

    No surprise indeed, this is basically what applicants have been saying about many BHC posts outside the EU.
    Nigeria is in a union of countries called ECOWAS, and I would guess if the OCIUKBA would drop into any of the other 14 members, or any of the other African nations for that matter, the verdict would be virtually identical.

    If the OCIUKBA keep up the good work, this would be the first sign of an improvement in over a decade for me. Yes these problems have existed that long!

  2. JB says:
    16 October 2009 at 8:43 pm

    At long last, somebody is making some sense out of the rubbish that is called visa application in Nigeria. If Abuja faired this poorly, what will they make of Lagos? And come to think of it… the IJs that always rule in favour of the SSHD even when there are no POs for appeals that come from Abuja!! This should make for good reading in Nigeria. For the sake of those who do not know, visa fees in Nigeria are among the highest in the world while the per capita income is among the lowest.

    • Mr T says:
      20 October 2009 at 1:50 pm

      JB

      Correct me if I am wrong – I thought all fees world wide were standardised, and a pdf file can be downloaded from the UKBA website detailing as such if necessary.
      Obviously there is currency conversion overseas.

  3. A says:
    17 October 2009 at 2:47 pm

    That’s great news to me.It’s sharp practise and no other business could get away with it.

  4. A says:
    19 November 2009 at 10:53 am

    I know this is an old posting but can’t resist having a good old rant about about the so called ‘fiance’ visa issued by foreign clearance offices.
    To the man on the street there appears to be two options.Settlement and visit.Confusing really,as visit implies returning home again.Neither is it settlement exactly,as that comes later.And only if the marriage happens.It’s almost like a hidden category and extremely confusing.So confusing infact that even staff at the VFS don’t seem to grasp the concept.My partner was told repeatedly that she would have to return to her home country to apply for spouse,after marriage,Effectively she was blocked from making the application she wanted.Reluctantly she was persuaded to put an intended departure date(within 6mnths) and the clearance officer gleefully refused it under visitor category with no right of appeal.
    This was despite it having fiance written all over the application itself.
    Now i know it’s probably a great feeling for a clearance officer to spot a loop hole and refuse an undesirable(in their opinion)applicant.But i was paying for it and to me that amounts to obtaining funds by fraudulent means.This is the main reason for my comment and the reason I am interested to hear of Mr Vine..

  5. Damning reports by Chief Inspector « Free Movement says:
    28 July 2010 at 9:23 am

    [...] story and pick out some choice quotes from the Pakistan report when I get a chance. I thought the Nigeria report was pretty damning, but this one is apparently their most critical [...]