Days after the BBC released a documentary: ‘Stranded: Exposing the UK’s Immigration Scammers’, which exposed visa scammers taking advantage of African migrants, the reporter who covered the story, Olaronke Alo, has dismissed claims that the documentary seeks to initiate policy changes in the United Kingdom’s immigration processes.
There had been fears among some members of the Nigerian community in UK that the immigration policies for work visas to the UK could be tightened, likening the documentary to a 2023 interview a Nigerian YouTube influencer, Emdee Tiamiyu, did which resulted in some adjustments to the dependant visas of those coming to the UK for graduate studies.
Speaking to The Guardian yesterday, Alo said: “We are not trying to engineer a policy change. This is for public interest, for people to be aware especially of victims of these visa and Certificates of Sponsorships (CoS) scam and what they are going through. We are using this journalism basically to showcase the importance of being aware of the rogue agents trying to exploit them, that you are not suppose to pay for CoS or offer money for jobs abroad.
“While we understand that there might be loopholes in the work visas category, we want authorities to be aware of some of the problems with visa exploitations which we highlighted in the documentary because we want all authorities concerned to be able to tighten any loopholes that might be giving chances for these rogue agents to operate.”
Reacting to the denial by the Nigerian doctor, Kelvin Alaneme, of any fraud committed, the BBC reporter said:
“The documentary is very clear. We have migrants and victims who have alleged that Dr Kelvin Alaneme took money from them for relocation, promised them a job in the UK and when they got to the UK, there was no job. That was much highlighted in the documentary. Also, we did send an undercover to find out how Alaneme’s operation works and how he conducts his relocation processing and from the documentary, he said it himself how his operation works in terms of offering our undercover journalist some commission to get him some vacancy slots in care homes in the UK. We did reached out to him for responses regarding the allegations that were being laid against him by the victims and he did respond to our inquiry where he stated that his company, the CareerEdu is not a scam, does not offer employment and also does not act as recruitment agency or provide jobs for cash and that were clearly highlighted in the documentary in his response when we sent him a right of reply.
“We did the story because we some people online alleging that these relocation agents are taking some money from them and they had relocated to the UK when they found out there were no jobs. Dr Alaneme was being called out by those who paid him some money for their friends and families that want to relocate to the UK and he in return had given them fake Certificates of Sponsorship with no job in return for what they had paid for; same for the other relocation agent that we featured in the documentary. This came to the BBC’s attention online via social media posts and that’s why we decided to investigate how the processes work and that was how we were able to find out that some of them potentially are illegally selling jobs in the UK. This documentary also serves as a timely and necessary investigation into the issue of exploitation of illegal visa scams and migrants to the UK. This is the time where we have a number of young Africans wanting to Japa. Because of the rise in the number of people embarking on this journey it was important for us to raise awareness with this story and also provide context, which for us is a matter of public interest.”
Alo further said that while the documentary has been received warmly and positively within the Nigerian community, there has been no reaction yet from the authorities. “As a journalist, what we do is for public interest, we are not looking out for public validation. Majorly for me, there have been positive feedback with people willing to talk about their stories and experiences and this is not going to deter us in any way from revealing more unscrupulous acts in other sectors.”
