Bad news if you are one of Nigeria’s big men with sticky fingers and a taste for American soil, the United States says it is watching, and your visa may be the first casualty.

The United States Mission in Nigeria dropped the warning on X, making it clear that corruption is no longer a local sport. Even the high and mighty could find themselves grounded, no matter how thick their connections are. It is Washington’s way of saying: your money may move around, but you will not.

While that sinks in here at home, across the pond, Reform the United Kingdom has decided to make immigration the hot topic ahead of the next election. Their pitch is to scrap the system that lets migrants settle in Britain permanently after five years.

At the moment, many Nigerians and other migrants work, study, and grind through those five years, then apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR, a golden ticket that brings stability, a path to citizenship, and yes, access to benefits. Reform says that privilege should go. Instead, migrants would have to keep reapplying for visas every five years, facing tougher salary thresholds and stricter English requirements.

The party also wants to lock welfare benefits for British citizens only. £234 billion saved. The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has already waved that off as fantasy.

Nigel Farage, never shy of a headline, put it bluntly: Britain is not “the world’s food bank”. He claims the “Boris wave” of looser post-Brexit immigration rules opened the doors too wide, and now hundreds of thousands of people, many of them Nigerians, are close to permanent residency.

Also Read: US embassy explains why Nigerians’ visas are being revoked

Nigerians in the United Kingdom who are planning their futures, this could be a rude awakening. That permanent stay, once a five-year hurdle, could suddenly stretch to ten years or vanish altogether if Reform’s plan sticks, and for those already enjoying ILR, there is the unease of knowing the conversation around benefits is turning sharper.

Here in Nigeria, the American warning may sound like déjà vu; we have heard promises to tackle corruption before. But this time, it is less about EFCC raids and more about boarding passes. The United States is dangling travel bans as a message to those who believe impunity comes with first-class tickets.

So whether it is Abuja’s big men worried about visas or Nigerians in London worried about their papers, it is clear that politics has become deeply personal. Your passport, your benefits, even your summer holiday plans, none of it feels as certain as it did yesterday.

Anita Chinedu