Tag: Nigeria

In a country where many would not hesitate to sell their country for a morsel of bread, the case of Nigeria’s Douglas Egharevba, whose asylum petition was rejected by the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), would ordinarily have numbered among the unlucky dip from the pool of those known to have filed baseless claims of ‘persecution’ and ‘primitive cultural practices’ against our beloved country. 

However, with the Federal Court in Canada upholding an earlier decision of Canadian Immigration Appeal Division (IAD), which had earlier on denied him asylum, our dear country seems to have arrived at the point where the harvest of daily indiscretions by errant nationals have finally berthed in kind of judicial monstrosity that would not have been associated with so-called developed countries at normal times.

I refer here to the ratio decidendi advanced by the court for the decision.

First, the court found issue with Egharevba’s membership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Peoples Congress (APC) (sic). Second, it agreed with the IAD that the PDP in particular, engaged in conduct amounting to terrorism and subversion of democratic institutions. And third, that the PDP were perpetrators of political violence, intimidation, and subversion and were protected being the governing party in power during the elections.

The PDP, it also averred, conducted unlawful acts such as ballot-stuffing, ballot box snatching, intimidation, violence, and murder of opposition supporters and candidates in the elections, and that the party had knowledge of the crimes committed by members and supporters but apparently did nothing to discipline its members or discourage violent and subversive practices, noting that the use of political violence was a long-standing feature of the PDP!

And finally, that the rank and file of the PDP, to which the petitioner had admitted to its membership, was vicariously liable for the violence and subversion of Nigeria’s process, thus rendering the applicant inadmissible in Canada!

Nigerians, understandably have been fulminating against this novelty of a trial under which a political party that was not even remotely a nominal party was found guilty of terrorism and subversion and those deemed to have associated with it condemned to suffer its dire consequences, and this in immigration proceedings!

“The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge”; so says the holy writ.

Like many of our compatriots, our dear national may have in the moment of a desperate struggle escape Nigeria’s Titanic thought little of the dire consequences of munching sour grapes. Now, his teeth and perhaps those of the rest of us are condemned to the edge!

For a story that began nearly eight years ago, the judgment must have come as dramatic, unwanted, if not entirely unimaginable, twist.

It began in September 2017, when our man, Douglas Egharevba, filed an inland refugee claim. The Background Declaration Form which he completed had stated that he was a member of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) from December 1999 until December 2007. He claimed to have ported, thereafter to the All People’s Congress [APC] in December 2007 and remained in the party till May 2017.

(Note that the APC was never at any time known as All People’s Congress but All Progressives Congress; in any case, the party was not formed in 2007 when the applicant was said to have joined but in 2013). 

Anyway, he was referred to a Canadian Border Services Agency [CBSA] to determine his admissibility to Canada. A year later, in September 2018, he would make his appearance before a CBSA officer. Although the official would in January 2019, declare him inadmissible to Canada on the grounds of being a member of PDP, an organization which in the opinion of the immigration official, had engaged in ‘acts of subversion against a democratic government, institution, or process and engaged in terrorism, based on his earlier affirmation of membership of the PDP’, the Immigration Division [ID] would, nonetheless determine that the applicant, Egharevba, was not subject to inadmissibility under the relevant provisions of the Canadian law.

That reprieve turned out to be temporary. Canada’s Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness immediately took the matter to the Immigration Appeal Division (IAD). In the end, the ID decision was overturned.

Next, Egharevba turned to the court for judicial review. Well, it came on June 17, when Canada’s Justice Phuong T.V. Ngo affirmed the judgment of the (IAD). Notably, the judge also found Egharevba’s membership of the PDP alone as sufficient to make him inadmissible to Canada under paragraph 34(1)(f) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) – in what could arguably be the most expansive, if not egregious rendition of the doctrine of vicarious responsibility in modern jurisprudence. 

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Like most Nigerians, I join in the outrage on the simple ground that the law needed not be an ass as the Canadian court would have us accept. And just like one commentator noted, the decision wasn’t just an immigration one; it was in every sense a political one, very pregnant, with the consequences so dire that the Nigerian government will do good to pay attention. Yet, to the extent that the judgment purports to put the entire political system to trial, the pronouncements, with all due respect, smacks of a jurisdictional overreach.

The other equally troubling part of the judgment is the imputation of guilt by mere association and this in the absence of any specific charge, particularly against the applicant in the aftermath of the court already deeming the PDP’s sins as treasonable and so, unforgiveable. It explains why the Canadian court would cite a specious interpretation of ‘terrorism’ and ‘violence’ to validate what could only be a strange decision. That is absolutely unnecessary. Surely, the Canadians can make their immigration decisions without pulling the roofs over the heads on everyone or as in this particular case, (mis)appropriating the frustrations of the citizens with the electoral process for purposes that are not entirely altruistic. It is neither helpful nor right.

For while the Nigeria’s electoral system is certainly far from perfect, its greatest critics are by far Nigerians themselves.

This takes us to the deeper question of how Nigerians, caught in the vortex of immigration challenges, would not hesitate to throw their country under the bus. Surely, the Egharevba story is only one out of many. As it is, the real story behind the movement from the PDP to APC only to end up as fodder for an asylum bid in faraway Canada will most likely remain untold. So it is for other countless asylum applicants known to have sought asylum for variety of reasons ranging from female genital mutilation (circumcision) even where the cultural practice no longer exist, to the Boko Haram insurgency even when those filing the claims have never in their lives crossed to the other side of River Niger! In all of these, the end is supposed to justify the means.

 Thanks to the global strongman, Donald J. Trump, assumptions about immigration are fast-changing as the myths that have sustained them have been whittling. Across the globe, things are no longer at ease. For while the grass may be greener outside, the pathway to that other side has continued to narrow.

For the Canadian court, the terrorism tag on the PDP goes beyond a ratio decidendi of convenience; more like a symbolic invitation for Nigerians to take note.