The High Court has refused J. C. O.’s application for leave to seek judicial review of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s refusal of his application for refugee status. The hearing was a telescoped judicial review application. The judge did not decide the substantive reliefs sought because leave was refused.
The Tribunal’s decision rested on the applicant’s failure to seek state protection and its conclusion that internal relocation within Nigeria was viable. It said he could work as a pharmacist elsewhere in the country, including in a southern state where religious tensions were lower. The Tribunal did not expressly say whether it believed his account. The High Court judge concluded that the Tribunal had accepted his credibility.
The judgment summarised the applicant’s account of fearing persecution in Nigeria because of his religious beliefs. He said a woman he had been in a relationship with became pregnant, and that he feared harm after she was taken to a Sharia court. He also described an attack on his shop, his mother’s abduction, and his flight through France to Ireland. These were reported as the applicant’s account, not findings that each event occurred.
The court dismissed complaints that the Tribunal had failed to consider the appeal grounds and the report of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, finding those claims unsubstantiated. It treated a possible misstatement of the asylum claim’s legal grounds as minor and said it had not affected the result. A complaint about the Tribunal’s treatment of country information and Nigerian laws on stoning and amputation also failed: the judge said the material relied on by the applicant was available in the 2009 report and that the Tribunal had accepted the existence of Sharia law and stoning sentences in northern Nigeria.
The judge also rejected the argument that the applicant had already tried and failed to relocate within Nigeria. The Tribunal had treated his trip to Port Harcourt as an effort to seek his brother’s help, not an attempt to relocate; the High Court found that assessment rational and evidence-based.
Finally, the court found no basis to challenge the Tribunal’s treatment of the applicant’s brief transit through France. The judge said the “first safe country” issue did not determine the asylum decision and had neutral effect because the Tribunal had positively assessed credibility. Leave was refused, so the court made no orders on the underlying reliefs.