The High Court has refused to quash a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision rejecting a Nigerian man’s application for refugee status, holding that the Tribunal was entitled to find that state protection was available in Nigeria.
Mr Justice Barr also ruled that several credibility findings made by the Tribunal could not stand. He concluded, however, that those errors did not displace the separate finding on state protection.
The applicant, identified as N.O., said he had been threatened and attacked by a man who opposed his relationship with the man’s future wife. He described a kidnapping, assaults, a fire at his family home and a later knife attack. Police reports submitted in support of his account recorded complaints and investigations, but also stated that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute in the kidnapping matter and that the alleged assailant remained at large.
The Tribunal found the applicant was not a refugee in a decision dated 28 September 2010. He sought judicial review to quash that decision and a related proposal to deport him. The High Court first extended the time to bring the case until 8 December 2010, finding good and sufficient reason for the delay.
On credibility, the court held that the Tribunal wrongly relied on a statutory provision concerning whether Ireland was the first safe country the applicant had reached: he had not claimed that it was. The court also found the Tribunal gave no adequate reason for rejecting his account of travelling through France and Finland, and had not assessed his evidence of serious harm alongside the police reports before concluding that the alleged attacker’s failure to kill him undermined his credibility. Those findings were set aside. A Tribunal statement about whether the applicant’s wife had been married to the alleged attacker was, the judge said, irrelevant to credibility.
The court reached a different conclusion on state protection. It found the Tribunal had given considerable weight to the police reports, which described police action on complaints and efforts to locate the alleged attacker. The judge held that the Tribunal was entitled to conclude that the Nigerian authorities were taking the complaints seriously and that adequate state protection was available. The applicant had not rebutted the presumption that the state could protect its citizens.
The court therefore refused to quash the Tribunal’s decision. The judgment did not grant the requested certiorari or determine the underlying refugee claim afresh.