A Canadian federal court has denied the asylum appeal of Nigerian businesswoman Deborah Abosede Ogungbemi, who claimed she faced the risk of being killed by loan sharks in Nigeria over an unpaid 40 per cent interest, with Justice Palotta J ruling that her application was neither unreasonable nor procedurally unfair, according to court filings obtained by Peoples Gazette, after Ms Ogungbemi, whose earlier claims had been rejected by both the Refugee Protection Division (RPD) and the Refugee Appeal Division (RAD), told the court she took loans from illegal money lenders to fund her studies in Canada and support her parents’ business, repaid the principal but could not pay the interest, and alleged that the lenders’ harassment ultimately led to her parents’ deaths, claims the RPD initially dismissed on grounds that she had a viable Internal Flight Alternative (IFA) within Nigeria, a position later upheld by the RAD despite her submission of new evidence including death certificates, newspaper articles and a mental health report, with the appeal body accepting the medical report but rejecting the certificates and articles as lacking credibility due to discrepancies, noting that the death certificates did not align with Nigeria’s National Documentation Package template and that the newspaper reports were identical word-for-word despite being published by different outlets, prompting the RAD to stress that it was not legally required to hold an oral hearing on credibility, a stance Ms Ogungbemi challenged as “unfair” and “unreasonable,” but which Justice Palotta upheld, validating the RAD’s findings and describing the identical articles as bearing the “hallmarks of brown envelope journalism,” while concluding, “I am not persuaded that the RAD erred as alleged,” and adding that “Ms Ogungbemi has not established that the RAD’s decision was unreasonable or procedurally unfair. Accordingly, I must dismiss this application for judicial review.”
