The UK government has granted a retired Ghanaian shopkeeper, Nelson Shardey, the right to stay in the country after about 47 years since arriving there to study.

After being told in 2019 that he was not a citizen and had no right to live in the UK, the Home Office on Thursday granted the 74-year-old an indefinite leave to stay in the country after it was decided that his case was “exceptional.”

Upon his attempt to apply for a passport to return to Ghana following his mother’s death in 2019, officials told him he was not a British citizen. They directed him to apply for the 10-year route to settlement, which cost about £7,000, with a further £10,500, over the same period, to access the NHS, which he could not afford.

Mr Shardey, as reported by the BBC, contested the Home Office’s decision in court, raising approximately £50,000 through crowdfunding to cover his legal expenses. 

The retired shopkeeper insisted that since arriving in the UK in 1977, he had never been queried about his right to live or work in the UK and had never left the country, which he regarded as home.

He prayed the Home Office to treat him as an exception due to his long residence in the UK, his bravery award and his exceptional service to the community.

However, before the scheduled court hearing in the autumn, Mr Shardey was notified that the Home Office had reversed its earlier stance and granted him indefinite leave to remain. 

The Home Office also recognised that the Immigration Act allowed its discretion to grant Mr Shardey indefinite leave to remain outside the normal immigration rules and waived the application fee.

Expressing his happiness and relief at the ruling, Mr Shardey said he was “overwhelmed”. He thanked “everybody who believed in us and supported us in words and donations.”

He added that although he won the battle, he and his supporters “hope to win the war, for the authorities to agree that the 10-year route is inhuman and abolish or shorten it”.

In the same vein, his lawyer, Nicola Burgess of Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, who said, “Nelson’s bravery in the face of dysfunctional immigration system has been inspirational,” urged the new government to simplify the system to avoid “many more” like Mr Shardey, being forced into “an endless cycle of applications, bureaucracy and expensive fees”.

A spokesperson for the Home Office also revealed that officials were working with Mr Shardey to process his application for indefinite leave to remain, while apologising “for any inconvenience and distress caused.”

After moving to the UK on a student visa, Mr Shardey’s family was unable to pay his fees following a coup in Ghana, and he thereafter took several jobs, including making Mother’s Pride bread and Kipling’s Cakes near Southampton and Bendick’s Chocolate in Winchester.

After an earlier failed marriage to a British woman that led to a relocation to Wallasey to run his own business as a newsagent called Nelson’s News, Mr Shardey soon remarried and had two sons, Jacob and Aaron.