The High Court granted an anonymised Nigerian applicant leave to challenge the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s refusal of his asylum claim, finding substantial grounds to argue that the tribunal’s reasoning was inadequate. The court did not decide whether the applicant qualified for asylum; it granted leave to seek judicial review and said it would discuss the form of the order with counsel.
The applicant had arrived in Ireland in August 2007 and claimed asylum. The tribunal refused his application in a decision dated 21 February 2008. He sought leave to have that decision quashed.
His account was that, as a Christian pastor in Lagos who spoke against Sh’aria law, he became a target of a militant Islamic group. He said his church was burned down in February 2007 and his sister was murdered the following day. He said he reported the events to police, was advised to leave Lagos, and feared he would be targeted again if returned to Nigeria, where he said state protection was ineffective.
The tribunal had found that his complaint did not amount to persecution under the Convention and described his evidence as lacking credibility and “quite unbelievable”. It also concluded that he could relocate within Nigeria and viewed his repeated pre-2007 trips to the United Kingdom as inconsistent with a well-founded fear.
Justice Hogan said the tribunal had not explained why the applicant’s demeanour undermined his credibility or identified which parts of his account it rejected and why. The judgment noted that the tribunal appeared to accept that he was a pastor whose preaching had offended Muslims, leaving unclear whether it had rejected his account of the church’s destruction and his sister’s death. The court also noted that a report recorded the applicant had submitted a newspaper article about the Niger Delta Oil Crisis and photographs of church remains; the tribunal had not explained any rejection of that material.
The judge found substantial grounds to challenge the tribunal’s internal relocation conclusion because it did not identify a particular area of Nigeria or explain why relocation there would be safe and reasonable for this applicant. The judgment also said his UK travel appeared to have taken place before the February 2007 events he said gave rise to his fear, so that travel was not rationally connected to whether that later fear was well founded.