Nearly 50,000 Nigerians Received British Employment Permits Over a Five-Year Period, According to a Recent Study

Between 2021 and the first quarter of 2026, the United Kingdom awarded 49,498 work visas to Nigerian nationals, as revealed by the latest Home Office occupation visa data, with the majority of these grants going to health and care workers, making Nigeria the second-highest recipient of UK work visas globally.

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This data also shows that a total of 54,707 work visa applications were submitted by Nigerians during this period, resulting in a grant rate of 90.5 per cent, prior to the UK's policy adjustments in 2024, which led to a significant decrease in Nigeria's annual work visa grants from 28,495 in 2023 to just 2,851 in 2025.

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The figures are derived from two UK Home Office immigration datasets covering the period from 2021 to Q1 2026, which document work visa grants by occupation, industry, and nationality across the five-year span, highlighting the dominant role of the Health and Care Worker visa in Nigeria's work visa landscape.

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The Health and Care Worker visa accounted for 42,893 of the 49,498 grants in the SOC2010 period alone, with care workers and home carers receiving the most grants at 22,376, followed by nurses with 9,359 grants, and other medical professionals.

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The Human Health and Social Work Activities industry absorbed 42,503 of Nigeria's total work visa grants, representing 85.9 per cent of the total, while outside the health sector, Nigeria's Skilled Worker visa grants totalled 3,398 across the period.

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The top non-health occupations for Nigerian nationals included chartered and certified accountants with 536 grants, programmers and software development professionals with 401 grants, and management consultants and business analysts with 321 grants.

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The Creative Worker route, which covers musicians, actors, and entertainers, contributed 1,791 further grants to the total, with the year-on-year data showing a significant increase in grants from 5,119 in 2021 to 14,084 in 2022, and peaking at 28,495 in 2023, before declining sharply in 2024.

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The surge in grants between 2021 and 2023 was driven by the UK government's expansion of the Health and Care Worker visa in 2022, which aimed to address acute vacancies in the care sector created by the COVID-19 pandemic and post-Brexit loss of European labour.

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Nigeria was among the top three countries of origin for migrant care workers arriving in the UK in 2022 and 2023, with 146,000 Health and Care Worker visas granted to applicants of all nationalities in 2023, making it the most popular skilled worker route.

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However, the UK's National Health Service trusts are officially discouraged from directly recruiting health workers from Nigeria, which is on the World Health Organisation's list of countries facing critical health worker shortages.

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The decline in visa grants began in late 2023 and accelerated in 2024, when the Home Office tightened sponsorship requirements, raised the minimum salary threshold for skilled workers, and enforced compliance action against rogue care sector employers.

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Health and Care Worker visa applications, which had peaked at 18,300 per month in August 2023, fell to 2,400 by March 2024, with Nigeria's work visa applications dropping by approximately 68 per cent in 2024, according to research firm Intelpoint's analysis.

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Among African nationalities, Nigeria led the work visa category, followed by Zimbabwe with 35,242 grants, Ghana with 20,649 grants, and South Africa with 12,018 grants, with the top three African nationalities accounting for 73 per cent of the total work visa grants issued to Africans.

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Globally, the UK issued 666,442 occupation-based work visa grants from 2021 to Q1 2024, with India ranking the highest with 169,286 grants, representing 25.4 per cent of all grants, while Nigeria accounted for 7.4 per cent with 49,498 grants.

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The UK's Health and Care Worker visa route, introduced in 2021, offers reduced visa fees, faster processing, and exemption from the Immigration Health Surcharge for qualifying medical and care professionals, in response to the UK's growing need for overseas-trained health professionals.

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By 2030, one in five UK residents is expected to be over 65, triggering a National Health Service vacancy crisis and creating a surge in demand for health professionals, according to the Home Office.