A British university student has been stuck in Kenya since September, unable to return home because UK officials have refused to issue him with emergency travel documentation.
Michael Omidire, who was born in the UK and brought up in London, has missed a full term of university as a result of his protracted struggle to organise paperwork to allow him to travel back to the UK. He was unable to celebrate his 21st birthday with his family in London earlier this month, and it is unlikely that he will be able to return to the UK in time for Christmas.
Omidire, who has no connection to Kenya, had travelled there with school friends for a week’s holiday before the start of his university term in Cardiff, where he is a second-year student studying economics and Italian. He travelled out using his Ghanaian passport. When he attempted to check in for his flight home, airline staff told him that this was insufficient documentation to allow him on the flight back to Britain.
He assumed he would be able to resolve his difficulties relatively swiftly by contacting UK consular officials but three months later he remains in limbo in Kenya, uncertain about when he will be able to return home.
“I was born in Britain, went to school in Britain. I’m British. It feels like a no-brainer – I should be helped to get home,” he said by phone from Nairobi. “This is the first time I’ve travelled to Africa. It’s been a huge ordeal. I feel like I’ve been treated more like a foreigner than a British citizen.”
Omidire understands now that he made a mistake in travelling without having applied for a British passport (although he had previously travelled using his Ghanaian passport when he went on a school trip to Austria), but is dismayed at the length of time it has taken to untangle the situation. He is in the process of applying for a British passport from Kenya, but 11 weeks after submitting the application he has been told his forms are still being checked.
When he contacted the emergency travel documentation team, he was told it was unable to assist. “This will come as disappointing news but your situation does not meet our exceptional circumstances,” an official from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s document policy team said in an email.
Omidire was born to a Ghanaian mother and Nigerian father in Milton Keynes in 2001. Because neither of his parents were British citizens, he had to go through the process of naturalisation to acquire citizenship. He was naturalised and attended his citizenship ceremony this summer. His family had been unable to meet the costs of his naturalisation process (currently £1,300) until this year.
Although he has a Ghanaian passport, a digital copy of his indefinite leave to remain certificate, and a copy of his naturalisation papers, airline officials told him they risked being fined if they allowed him to board.
“My assumption was that I could travel on the Ghanaian document. I made a mistake but I thought it could be sorted out quickly. I’m not sure I will be able to get back this year,” he said. During the months that he has spent in Kenya different UK officials have given him different pieces of conflicting advice, suggesting variously that he should apply for a visa to the UK, request right of abode in the UK, apply for a passport as an overseas Kenyan resident, or apply as a British citizen.
He has spent more than £1,000 on phone calls to the UK visas and immigration offices, the passport office and consular services trying to resolve his situation.
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“The main thing I’ve gathered is that most of the people who are supposed to help don’t really care. This could have been dealt with in a matter of weeks,” he said. He said there was one official in the passport office who had been very sympathetic and promised to contact him once the document is approved and sent out for printing.
Immigration lawyer Colin Yeo said: “[Omidire] has made a mistake but I have no doubt that if he were a white British citizen stranded abroad with no passport, officials would have resolved his situation by now.”
Omidire has managed to keep up with most of his Cardiff course by studying remotely from the home of a school friend’s grandparents, but is facing immigration fines in Kenya because he has overstayed his one-month visa. “I’ve never faced so many problems. It’s astonishing that I am not allowed back home.”
A government spokesperson said: “Published guidance is clear applications for a first time British passport from overseas will take longer. All British citizens who wish to travel into the UK should hold a British passport or have a certificate of entitlement in their foreign passport to prove their right of abode in the UK.”
