The High Court has ordered a fresh assessment of a Nigerian man’s international protection claim after finding that the Appeals Tribunal failed to properly examine whether police could protect him from powerful and politically connected alleged persecutors.
The applicant, identified as I.U., is a 38-year-old Nigerian national. He said that while driving a truck for work in February 2011, two boys on a motorbike entered his lane and crashed into the vehicle. Both later died. The Tribunal accepted his account that police considered the boys intoxicated and found him not at fault.
It also accepted that the boys’ families subsequently targeted him. His truck was burned, he was attacked and stabbed, his family home was burned and his mother was injured. One boy’s father was described as a prominent politician and the other as a powerful businessman.
I.U. left Nigeria later in 2011. After travelling through Libya and several European countries, he arrived in Ireland in 2021 and applied for international protection.
The International Protection Office rejected his claim in November 2023. The Appeals Tribunal upheld that decision in March 2025, finding that state protection or internal relocation was available.
Mr Justice Ferriter held that the Tribunal made a legal error in its assessment of state protection. Although it acknowledged corruption and weaknesses in Nigeria’s institutions, it focused on whether police generally investigate ordinary crime effectively. It did not adequately address I.U.’s specific case that his alleged persecutors’ political and financial influence could place them beyond effective police control.
The judge also identified an error in the Tribunal’s treatment of the statutory presumption arising from past persecution. He did not quash the decision on that ground alone because the Tribunal had ultimately proceeded to consider state protection.
The decision was nevertheless quashed. The protection application must now be reconsidered from the beginning by a newly constituted Tribunal, including any issue of internal relocation.