The High Court has dismissed a Nigerian man’s judicial review challenge to the International Protection Appeals Tribunal’s rejection of his protection appeal. Mr Justice Richard Humphreys ruled that the applicant had not shown a legal error that would allow the court to overturn the tribunal’s decision.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as W.A.L., had argued that the tribunal failed to give proper weight to evidence about violence in Borno State and to medico-legal documentation concerning injuries he said he had suffered. The court stressed that judicial review does not allow it to replace the tribunal’s assessment of the merits with its own.
The tribunal had accepted that there was an internal conflict in Borno State and considered country information reporting 65 attacks, 411 civilian deaths and the displacement of 1.7 million people from three north-eastern Nigerian states. It nevertheless found the level of indiscriminate violence was not so extreme that a civilian would face a qualifying risk merely by being present. The High Court said the applicant’s first ground challenged that factual assessment without pleading irrationality or another basis for court intervention.
The applicant’s lawyers also relied on his injuries and a claim of post-traumatic stress disorder as evidence of an individualised risk. But the tribunal had not accepted that the injuries were caused as claimed, and it found no accepted material facts showing the applicant faced sufficient personal risk. The judge said a vulnerability argument based on his mental condition had not been pleaded and, in any event, the applicant had not established that the medical information was overlooked.
On the medical reports, the judge rejected the argument that documentation consistent with an applicant’s account creates a rebuttable presumption in their favour. A decision-maker may weigh such support against other evidence, he said. The tribunal had set out contradictions in the applicant’s account, and its conclusion that the account was not credible was lawfully open to it. The High Court would not second-guess that weighing absent unreasonableness or another recognised legal error.
The applicant came to Ireland in 2013 and applied for asylum in 2015, after previously seeking asylum in Italy. His protection application was rejected by the International Protection Office in May 2018; the tribunal dismissed his appeal in January 2019. He had earlier challenged a Dublin transfer decision, but those proceedings were compromised and he was admitted to the protection process.
The High Court dismissed the judicial review application. It did not substitute a new assessment of the protection claim; the tribunal’s decision remained in place.