By Bayo Wahab
Over 13,000 Nigerians who applied for refugee protection in Canada from January 2013 to December 2024 were rejected.
According to data from the Refugee Protection Division (RPD) of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, this figure includes 811 Nigerians whose applications were turned down in 2024.
The board placed Nigeria among the top five countries with the most rejected claims.
Mexico tops the list with 2,954 rejections, followed by India and Haiti, which have 1,688 and 982 rejected claims, respectively.
Colombia is in fourth place with 723 rejected claims, while Nigeria is in fifth place with 13,171 rejections.
In Canada, asylum seekers get refugee protection if the RPD satisfactorily confirms that their claims meet the United Nations definition of a Convention refugee.
In its definition of the Status of Refugee, the 1951 UN Convention states refugees are persons who have a substantiated fear of persecution because of their race, nationality, religion, political ideology or membership in a particular social group, which can include sexual orientation, gender identity, being a woman and persons living with HIV/AIDS.
However, in Canada, asylum seekers are expected to show evidence that they are in danger of torture, risk to their life or risk of cruel and unusual treatment or punishment if they return to their country of nationality.
According to the Refugee Board’s application guideline, if an applicant’s “claim is eligible, it is sent to the RPD to start the claim for refugee protection process.”
The breakdown of the rejections showed that 127 Nigerian claims were rejected in 2013, 241 in 2014 and 248 in 2015.
In 2016, 2017 and 2018, 476, 917 and 1,777 claims were rejected, respectively.
In 2019, 3,951 Nigerian applicants were turned down, marking the highest number of rejected claims by Nigerians.
Meanwhile, 1,770, 1,686, 728, 439 and 811 persons were denied protection in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, respectively.
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