Officials challenge deportation claims

A 19-year-old Nigerian Leaving Certificate student was wearing a tracksuit, not a school uniform, when he was deported last week, according to immigration officials.

The Irish Times understands that officials are also claiming that Olunkunle Eluhanla was offered the chance to go home to collect his belongings before he was deported, but declined.

Friends and supporters of Mr Eluhanla and 34 other Nigerians who were deported on the same flight are to demonstrate outside the Dáil today.

Mr Eluhanla, a student at Palmerstown community college, was detained at the Garda National Immigration Bureau offices on March 14th.

It is claimed he was offered the chance to go for a judicial review of his asylum case but did not avail of it. Twelve failed asylum seekers who were supposed to have been on the flight to Lagos avoided deportation in this way.

Mr Eluhanla told officials when applying for asylum that his father was killed in ethnic conflict in Nigeria, after which he moved with his mother and two siblings to Lagos. He also gave his age as 20 or 21, not 19.

Minister for Justice Michael McDowell yesterday said he "did not accept" that Mr Eluhanla had no relatives in Nigeria.

Pointing out that Mr Eluhanla came to Ireland as an unaccompanied minor, he said immigration law would be "in a shambles" if "orphans" were given free entry into the State. "If I was to state as a policy that anybody who had lost one parent in Nigeria could come to Ireland because they weren't living with their other parent and stay here and be educated, we would have a completely chaotic immigration law," Mr McDowell said.

"Just because you're young doesn't mean you aren't deported. An Irish person going to America in similar circumstances would be back on the next plane and would never see the inside of an American school," he added.

"The Irish Government has a policy of giving the highest standards of protection to people who seek asylum here in Ireland. The particular facts of the case show that he was given very generous educational facilities by the Irish State . . . if you have a system of law and you have a system of immigration law in a country, there are circumstances where you have to deport people at the age of 19," he said.

Fine Gael's justice spokesman Jim O'Keeffe accused the Minister of being "less than honest" in suggesting the final decision to deport was not his.

Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte declared that "institutionalised cruelty must not be allowed to become part of public policy.

"It is time to suspend the current programme of deportation to allow a review of the entire system," he said.

Green Party TD Paul Gogarty also called for a Dáil debate on the matter. "The statement made by the Minister about Mr Eluhanla's education is absurd and arrogant and patronising in the extreme."

It was stated in yesterday's edition that a Nigerian woman, Iyabo Nwanze, had been forcibly drugged prior to her deportation last week. In fact, Ms Nwanze says she witnessed this happening to another, unidentified woman, who was being deported.

A Department of Justice spokeswoman said last night there was "no question" of any deportee being sedated. She said a woman on the flight had been suffering from an upset stomach and mild diarrhoea and needed a drip. The woman recovered and was able to walk off the flight, she said.