Nigerian lady granted political asylum in the UK after joining Ipob and claiming she was at risk

APPLYING for membership of the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob) had enabled a Nigerian asylum seeker in the UK to be granted indefinite leave to remain after she was denied eight previous times.

In an unprecedented development, a 49 year old Igbo lady applied for asylum eight times in the UK between 2011 and 2017 but was rejected each time. She then decided to join Ipob and applied for asylum claiming that she could not return to Nigeria because the government in Abuja has classified Ipob as a terrorist organisation.

Due to the fact that Ipob is labelled as a terrorist organisation by Nigeria but not the UK, the applicant had a genuine case. Aware of the fact that this meant that legally, the Nigerian government could abuse he fundamental hu8man rights if she was deported, the lady was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK.

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, saying it was a comically ludicrous interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Apparently, the Nigerian woman had said she was worried about being arrested at the airport and could even disappear if she returned to her home country. A lower tribunal judge originally rejected this claim due to a lack of evidence about her activities within the group as judge Iain Burnett ruled that the woman joined Ipob purely in order to create a claim for asylum.

However, the upper tribunal judge overturned the decision. Judge Loughran said it was likely the woman would be identified as an activist upon her return.

She ruled: “It is clear from the country's 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.”