INVESTIGATION: Canada Rush: What desperate Nigerian asylum seekers are telling Canada about Nigeria


By March this year, it will be three years since Gbenga Akinkunmi began scrambling to be granted asylum in Canada, based on unsubstantiated claim that almost every non-state actor in Nigeria was after his life and those of his family members.

In court documents reviewed by PREMIUM TIMES, Mr Akinkunmi claimed he fled from his home in Plateau State, north-central Nigeria, while his wife and two children fled elsewhere after members of the terrorist Boko Haram sect came after him for challenging herders who encroached on his property. He claimed that before that incident, he had survived two earlier attacks from the herders.

In Warri where he claimed he initially fled to, he said he was again kidnapped by Niger Delta militants and that he only escaped after paying a part of the ransom the abductors demanded.

Mr Akinkunmi said he later fled to New York on March 11, 2018, using a valid U.S. visa. The next day, he entered Canada and made a refugee claim the next year before the Canadian Refugee Protection Division (RPD), claiming he narrowly escaped being killed by militias in Nigeria.

His claim was rejected by immigration authorities, with the jury saying he could have embraced an internal flight alternative (IFA) in neighbouring Benin City if Plateau and Warri were unsafe. This means he should have sought refuge in another city in Nigeria rather than fleeing to Canada.

Benin City is 96.7 kilometres away from Warri and can be reached by car in about two hours. According to the transportation measurement platform, travel math, the total flight duration between airports in the two cities is 37 minutes.

After his application was rejected, Mr Akinkunmi petitioned the Refugee Appeal Division (RAD), arguing that Warri was too close to Benin and that deadly militants could be on his trail there. In Benin, he said, his six-year-old daughter risked forced genital mutilation. His appeal was dismissed.

With deportation imminent, last July, he sought the review of the verdict before the Federal Court of Canada. Again, his case was rejected.

“There was no credible evidence to establish, on a balance ofts could be on his trail there. In Benin, he said, his six-year-old daughter risked forced genital mutilation. His appeal was dismissed.

With deportation imminent, last July, he sought the review of the verdict before the Federal Court of Canada. Again, his case was rejected.

“There was no credible evidence to establish, on a balance of probabilities,” Justice Walker ruled, “that Mr Akinkunmi and his wife and daughter had been persecuted or threatened by his family or that the feared family members had been able to locate them since 2017.”

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Like Mr Akinkunmi, Prince Mctony Aire, 33, could also not convince authorities to grant him asylum in Canada. He had told a panel there that Islamic extremists and security forces in Nigeria were after him because he was bisexual. He claimed he was “detained, tortured and issued death threats” in Zaria, north-western Nigeria, before fleeing to Canada.

His case was dismissed by Justice von Finckenstein, who doubted his narratives and upheld a decision that the claimant faced less risk if he relocated to Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, which is 958 kilometres away from Zaria and can be reached by road in 12 hours and by air in an hour 22 minutes.

Analysing the Canada rush
The immigration cases involving Messrs Akinkunmi and Aire are among those concerning 300 Nigerians that we accessed and reviewed.

Documents detailing the cases are held by the Federal Court of Canada (FCC) and at least 5,000 pages of them were analysed by PREMIUM TIMES. They revealed what Nigerians are telling Canadian immigration authorities to claim asylum in the North American country.

This newspaper’s yearlong examination of the immigration documents showed a striking pattern of claims made by the Nigerian applicants. Nigerians seeking residency in Canada have more than tripled since 2015 when it rose from about 4,000 to nearly 13,000 in 2019.

A 2020 survey conducted by the Africa Polling Institute (API), a non-profit research think-tank, found the key “push factors” for the exodus of Nigerian immigrants to Canada to be due to Nigeria’s weak economy, heightened insecurity, perceived poor governance and the huge appetites for foreign degrees by citizens.


Reasons for exodus for Nigerian immigrants to Canada
Reasons for exodus for Nigerian immigrants to Canada
While these may be the underlying reasons for the exodus to Canada, some prospective Nigerian asylees sometimes make up stories about their personal situations and state of affairs in their country to convince authorities to grant them stay in grant them stay in one of the world’s most developed countries.

In the documents we reviewed, majority of the asylum seekers, 270, gave a single reason for wanting to leave Nigeria. The remaining 30 applicants gave more than one reason.

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Majority of the claimants, 52, or 19 per cent, claimed they needed to escape persecution due to their sexual orientation.

“This positions Nigeria as a country where sexual rights are not considered as human rights, and it opens spaces for conversation on the rights of the people in the LGBTQ communities,” Kudus Adebayo, a research fellow on diaspora and transnational studies at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, told PREMIUM TIMES.

Kudus Adebayo, a research fellow on diaspora and transnational studies at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan.
Kudus Adebayo, a research fellow on diaspora and transnational studies at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan.
“The country becomes a place where people can be forced out of their communities, separated from their families and lives because of their sexual orientation,” he added.

The Nigerian government outlawed same-sex relationships in 2014. The law stipulates up to 10 years jail term for belonging to a gay rights group and up to 14 years imprisonment for engaging in homosexual activities.

“Having a swelling asylum plea linked to the LGBTQ community is not shocking at all. The Nigerian state, with the anti same-sex law, and the general negative attitude towards non-heterosexual citizens, means that some people are constantly at the risk of losing their freedoms and lives,” Mr Adebayo said.

Alerted by this in 2017, Legal Aid Ontario which provides legal services for low-income people said it found an “unusual” pattern in sexual orientation claims by Nigerian asylees in Canada, a worrying trend it said may sometimes be fabricated.

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“It galls me because of the potential impact that it could have on the refugee system and the Canadian public’s perception of refugee claimants and refugees in a very vulnerable time globally,” Jawad Kassab, who leads the agency’s refugee and immigration programme, said. The agency declined comments on its latest position.

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