The United Kingdom, like, totally expressed some concern over Nigeria’s security situation, calling it “worrisome,” which is like, duh, with all the violent attacks happening in Plateau, Benue, and Borno states. The British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Richard Montgomery, chatted with journalists at his swanky Abuja pad on Wednesday, blaming the whole mess on spillovers from neighboring countries like Sudan and Niger. He was all like, “Yo, the UK government is totally working with Nigeria’s Office of the National Security Adviser and investing in security stuff to help out.”
Montgomery also mentioned this whole visa fraud situation, connecting it to more visa rejections happening lately. He was like, “Hey, if you wanna get that visa, make sure your docs are on point, okay?” Despite all these worries, the UK is still down to strengthen economic ties with Nigeria through some fancy-sounding thing called the Enhanced Trade and Investment Partnership (ETIP). They wanna boost cooperation in education, agriculture, finance, clean energy, digital stuff, and artsy things.
The envoy was all excited about this World Bank report saying Nigeria is on the road to economic recovery, which he thinks is awesome for investment. Trade between the UK and Nigeria is sitting at £7.2 billion right now, which is like, a lot of cash. Even though the UK is selling less oil stuff to Nigeria, Montgomery thinks it’s cool because Nigeria is making more of its own oil, which is like, good news. The UK is trying to help out Nigerian exports by giving tariff-free access to 3,000 products like cocoa, cashews, shrimp, and flowers.
