A Nigerian lady who was rejected refuge in Britain eight times has now been granted the right to remain after voluntarily joining the Indigenous People of Biafra, or IPOB.
According to a judge, the 49-year-old Nigerian lady (unnamed) joined IPOB “to create a claim for asylum”.
The woman came to the UK in 2011 and joined IPOB in 2017. Recall that IPOB is labelled a terrorist organisation by Nigeria, but not the UK.
UK judge rules
The UK upper tribunal judge, Gemma Loughran, said that because the woman was part of IPOB, she has a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ in her home country, Nigeria.
However, Shadow home secretary Chris Philip slammed the decision to grant asylum. He said it was a “comically ludicrous” interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Nigerian woman had said she was worried about being arrested at the airport and “disappeared” if she returned to her country.
A lower tribunal judge originally rejected this claim due to a lack of evidence about her activities within the group.
Judge Iain Burnett ruled that the woman joined IPOB purely “in order to create a claim for asylum”.
But the upper tribunal judge overturned the decision. It said it was likely the woman would be identified as an activist upon her return.
She ruled: “It is clear from the country background evidence that the security services act arbitrarily and arrest, harm and detain those it believes may be involved with IPOB without conducting an assessment of the extent of their involvement or their motivation.”
