‘I feel like I have failed everyone’ says Nigerian nurse accused of cheating after arriving in UK

When I was a little girl in my village in Nigeria going to school was something I could not even dream of because we did not have money. Then my mother sold everything we owned to pay for me to go to school.

I knew this was my only ticket to make something worthwhile out of my life and my family’s life.

My father had abandoned my mother because she gave birth to girls not boys and he said “girls were worth nothing”. That put a lot of pressure on my little self but made me determined to strive. I felt I had something to prove to my father and that education was the way I could do that.

Eventually I was able to study nursing at university and became the best student in some of my exams, graduating with a degree in nursing science.

I worked in two different hospitals in Nigeria and passed the exams I needed to do to work in the UK, including the CBT – computer-based test – which I did at Yunnik. I studied hard for this test.

No concerns were raised about my performance in the CBT by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) while I was in Nigeria and I travelled to the UK after undergoing a series of interviews, criminal checks, health checks, work and school tests.

I sat and passed the OSCE – objective structured clinical examination – after arriving in the UK. This is another requirement needed to practise as a nurse here. In the autumn of last year, NMC contacted me raising concerns about fraud at Yunnik test centre, which they said they were going to investigate. I was accused of using a proxy to sit the test there because of the quick time I completed the test in. I deny this. I believe that what is happening to us is a witch-hunt.

I sat the test again in the UK and passed it in a similar time but NMC said they are questioning my integrity even though I completed the test in similar times in Nigeria and UK. Nobody from NMC has ever worked with me and I have provided good character references from my line manager and university lecturers in Nigeria.

I have always been a studious person and am very self-motivated. But now I have lost my name, my integrity, my dreams and I feel like I have failed everyone who believed in me and the little girls back in my village who believed in themselves and their dreams because of me.

I don’t sleep at night. My pillows are always wet with crying. This feels like the end of my world because I have had to give up on all my dreams I worked so hard to achieve to get a better life for myself and my family. I am now a miserable person with a broken spirit and I am about to have the word “criminal” added to my name. My dream of being an international nurse able to work anywhere in the world has been shattered.