The High Court has refused leave for a Nigerian man to challenge the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s refusal of his asylum claim, finding that the tribunal gave reasoned and rational grounds for rejecting his account on credibility grounds.
The judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Stewart on 8 July 2015, concerned a judicial review application seeking to quash the tribunal’s decision of 14 December 2010 and have the appeal reconsidered by a different tribunal member.
The proceedings were issued outside the statutory time limit. The respondents did not oppose an extension, which the court granted.
The man said he had been involved in Nigerian political and human rights groups. He alleged that soldiers had tried to kill him at his Lagos home in 1994. He also said that, after he gave a speech in 2007 as chair of a group he had established, gunmen attacked his taxi and injured its driver. He attributed the attack to the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force and said its leader had ordered him targeted. These were his claims, not findings by the High Court.
The tribunal refused his claim after finding that inconsistencies undermined his credibility. It cited his failure to identify the NDPVF at an initial interview, despite later describing the group in detail, and differing accounts of how he got to a police station after the alleged attack. The tribunal did not go on to assess internal relocation or state protection.
The applicant argued that the tribunal’s reasons were inadequate and that the police-station issue was peripheral. He also submitted that the tribunal misunderstood his use of “mujahideen” as a generic term. The respondents argued that the decision should be read as a whole and that the tribunal was entitled to make fresh findings at the appeal hearing.
Justice Stewart concluded that the tribunal had given intelligible, specific and substantial reasons, and that its decision was reasoned and rational when read as a whole. She said the court should not substitute its own view of credibility for the tribunal’s unless the assessment process was legally flawed. Finding no such flaw, she refused leave.
The court’s decision was to refuse leave to bring the judicial review challenge. The judgment does not quash the tribunal’s asylum decision or order a reconsideration.