The High Court has dismissed a Nigerian man’s judicial review challenge to an International Protection Appeals Tribunal decision refusing him refugee status and subsidiary protection. Mr Justice Heslin ruled that the tribunal considered the core of the man’s claim and gave legally sound reasons for finding his general credibility had not been established.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as O.O., said he feared harm in Nigeria because neighbours had wrongly suspected that he and three male flatmates were gay. He claimed that a crowd attacked their Lagos apartment in January 2015, prompting him to flee. His account was that an older friend arranged his departure and that he travelled through Ghana and Turkey before arriving in Ireland.
The tribunal accepted that the account of events in Nigeria was broadly coherent and consistent with country-of-origin information, and found no implausibility in the core account sufficient to make an adverse credibility finding. It nevertheless considered the claim lacked specific detail, particularly about the alleged January 2015 attack, and concluded that the core facts had not been established on the balance of probabilities.
The tribunal then considered whether the applicant could receive the benefit of the doubt. It rejected his account of travelling on two international flights through three countries without being asked for documents or questioned by officials. It also relied on what it described as vagueness, evasiveness and unreasonable hesitation in his answers about the journey. The tribunal concluded that his general credibility was not established, so the benefit of the doubt could not be extended.
The applicant argued that disbelieving him about a peripheral matter—his travel—could not justify rejecting his protection claim. He also relied on press reports about a Dublin Airport worker convicted in 2018 of helping people bypass immigration controls. The court said those reports did not establish that this applicant had bypassed controls, and noted that he had not claimed to know whether he arrived at Dublin Airport.
Mr Justice Heslin held that the tribunal had in fact assessed the core claim before considering travel and the benefit of the doubt. The court’s role was judicial review, not an appeal or a fresh assessment of credibility. It found no material legal error in the tribunal’s process and dismissed the application. The court directed the parties to correspond about the form of order, including costs; its preliminary view was that costs should follow the event, subject to agreement or further submissions.