A false claim that 700 Nigerian nurses in the UK were found by the National Health Service (NHS) to have faked their qualifications to work in the country is circulating online, Reuters reports after fact-checking the claim.
“In the UK, the NHS found 700 Nigerian nurses had fake qualifications as people stood in for their exam,” posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, and Facebook say.
The X post, which at the time of writing had been viewed 1.3 million times, adds: “Nigeria is considered as a ‘red list’ country for the recruitment of health professionals, meaning poaching of staff could endanger its own health and care system.”
It is true that Nigeria is on a “red list” as one of 52 countries that the UK does not actively recruit from, according to the UK government’s code of practice.
This is in line with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) support and safeguards list to protect countries with healthcare staff shortages. Recruitment is only allowed when personnel apply directly or through a mutual agreement.
However, Reuters Fact Check team found that the claim that 700 Nigerian nurses were discovered by the NHS to have faked their qualifications to work in the UK is false.
Reuters found no reports about an NHS investigation. The NHS declined to comment and referred Reuters instead to an investigation by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), an independent entity that regulates and oversees the professional standards of 780,000 nursing and midwifery professionals in the UK, as the potential topic of the claim.
Internationally trained nurses and midwives who want to practice in the UK are required to take a two-part competency test to enrol on the NMC register: the first in the home country and the second in the UK.
In a September 20 statement, the NMC said it had uncovered widespread suspected exam fraud at the Yunnik Technologies Test Centre in Ibadan, Nigeria.
It said 48 professionals already on the NMC register, as well as 669 applicants to the register, were believed "more likely than not" to have achieved their scores in a computer-based test (CBT) fraudulently.
The 48 registered nurses suspected of fraud will be assessed by an independent review panel.
Another 467 registered nurses and midwives who took the CBT at Yunnik, but who aren't suspected of fraud, will still be required to retake the test.
An estimated 1,440 applicants from Yunnik not on the NMC register, both suspected and non-suspected, will also need to redo the CBT.
“To be clear, no final decision has been made and this does not relate to people’s original nursing/midwifery qualification,” the NMC told Reuters via email.
Reuters’ verdict is that the reports that 700 Nigerian nurses in the UK were found by the NHS to have faked their qualifications to work in the country is “false”.
The verdict says, “No registered nurses in the investigation have been confirmed to have fake qualifications.
“Forty eight registered nurses are under suspicion and will be reviewed by an independent panel. This is also an NMC-related matter, not NHS.
In September, SaharaReporters published a report by Mail Online that 48 Nigeria-trained nurses and midwives who ‘likely’ qualified fraudulently were still being allowed to treat patients while under investigation in the UK.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) had confirmed to Mail Online that 48 Nigerian professionals were suspected of paying someone to sit a computer-based exam that tests medical knowledge and is needed to work in Britain.
The NMC said it was 'more likely than not' that those it had identified obtained their result fraudulently, according to Mail Online.
However, the regulator told Mail Online that they would still be allowed to treat patients while investigations were underway — though not all were necessarily working in healthcare, according to the report.