Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to her Department’s press release entitled New UK–Nigeria partnership to speed up removals, published on 19 March 2026, what proportion of individuals returned to Nigeria are (a) visa overstayers, (b) failed asylum seekers and (c) foreign national offenders.

On 18 March 2026, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood signed a UK-Nigeria Migration Partnership Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Nigerian Interior Minister, the Hon. Dr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo.

Under the terms of the MOU, the Home Office will be able to facilitate returns using a UK Letter travel document. This will ensure that we are able to swiftly conduct the return of those that no longer have a right to be in the UK. Home Office officials will work closely with the Nigerian authorities to monitor implementation.

MOUs are not legally binding but are routine mechanisms used to manage activity between the UK and foreign governments.

The Home Office publishes statistics on returns from the UK in the Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release.

Foreign national offender (FNO) returns from the UK to Nigeria are published in Table Ret_D04 of the Returns detailed datasets with the most recent figures covering the period up to the end of December 2025.

The Home Office does not publish statistics on visa overstayer returns for any nationality. In addition, Nigeria does not appear in the nationality breakdown for failed asylum seeker (asylum related) returns as only the highest 10 nationalities are published.

These publication limitations apply only to those specific return categories and do not affect the published data on foreign national offender returns to Nigeria.