The High Court has refused an asylum seeker leave to bring a judicial review challenge to the dismissal of his appeal, finding he had not shown substantial grounds to argue that the decision was invalid or should be quashed. The court also refused the other reliefs sought.
Mr Justice McGovern, in a judgment delivered on 30 June 2006, granted an extension of time for the application. The challenge was late under the statutory 14-day limit, but the judge found the delay minimal and accepted that difficulties contacting the applicant had delayed the swearing of his grounding affidavit.
The applicant, Kayode Ogunyemi, had applied for asylum in Ireland in January 2005. The Refugee Applications Commissioner recommended that he not be recognised as a refugee. The Refugee Appeals Tribunal dismissed his appeal on 27 April 2005, and he received the decision by post on or about 29 April.
Ogunyemi’s account, as set out in the judgment, included claims of religious persecution connected to his Christian faith and his Muslim wife’s parents, and a risk of kidnapping linked to his work in Nigeria’s oil industry. He said he feared renewed kidnapping if returned and that Nigerian security services could not provide effective protection.
His barrister argued that the Tribunal had mishandled the evidence, including country-of-origin material, and that the absence of an oral appeal hearing prevented him from addressing issues in his case. The respondents’ barrister said a criticism of the Tribunal’s report took a passage out of context. The judge agreed: read as a whole, the report explained that the Tribunal considered the applicant’s failure to mention fear about returning to oil-industry work after questions about the alleged kidnapping relevant to its assessment of his credibility.
The judgment says the Commissioner and Tribunal considered the kidnapping claim and found it not credible, citing inconsistencies between interview answers and a questionnaire. The judge also accepted that country evidence before the Tribunal indicated that kidnapped oil-industry workers were foreign workers rather than Nigerians. He said the Tribunal had considered the state-protection issues and was entitled to determine the appeal without an oral hearing in the circumstances described.
The court stressed that it could not replace the Tribunal’s credibility assessment with its own. Applying the “anxious scrutiny” approach, the judge concluded that the applicant had not established substantial grounds for judicial review. Leave was refused, along with the other reliefs sought. The ruling addressed permission to bring judicial review; it did not itself determine the applicant’s asylum claim afresh.