Photo credit: the Punch Newspaper
A Nigerian family of four has been ordered to leave Canada by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).
Report Afrique reports that Lola Akinlade used to work as a medical sales representative at a pharmaceutical company in Lagos, Nigeria. There, she met a man who claimed to be an immigration consultant. The man offered to assist a naive Lola in applying for a master’s degree in business administration.Lola then gave the agent her passport, university transcripts, and money.
Subsequently, the agent supplied her with a study permit for Canada, plane tickets and an acceptance letter from the University of Regina.
She travelled to Canada in December 2016. But when she arrived, she was stopped in Winnipeg and told there were no spaces left in the university and that she would have to go on a waitlist. She then began searching independently for a new school and program. She finally enrolled at Nova Scotia Community College for social services and began her studies in 2017.
In 2019, she received a letter from the IRCC informing her that the acceptance letter was fake. She had already lost her work permit and was denied when she attempted to apply for a postgraduate work permit and a temporary resident permit.
Meanwhile, her husband and sons joined her in Nova Scotia in 2018. All of them have now lost their temporary resident status. Even the younger son, who was born in Canada in 2021 and has Canadian citizenship, lacks medical coverage because of his parents’ status.
Although Akinlade has been trying to clear her name and rectify the situation, she has failed to succeed.
