Nigerian would-be groom is deported as legal bid fails

The 28-year-old Nigerian man who was arrested minutes before he was due to marry an Irish girl has been deported to Lagos.

Mr Femi Adesoji failed last week in his legal attempts to prevent his deportation to Nigeria.Gardaí confirmed last night that he had been flown home yesterday morning.

Mr Adesoji's fiancée, 18-year-old Ms Laura Behan, has said she will travel to Nigeria in the near future to marry him there.

The man, who was arrested on January 24th, lived in the Naas area of Co Kildare and was on his way to a registry office in Carlow when he was arrested by detectives from the Garda National Immigration Bureau.

After the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, signed a deportation order for him last year, he took a test case to the Supreme Court against the Government's deportation procedures. It failed.

Following his arrest last month, the High Court put a stay on his deportation order pending another action by Mr Adesoji to prevent it on grounds his arrest and detention were unlawful.

However, Mr Justice Smyth upheld the validity of the order and rejected a challenge to the legality of his detention in the training unit at Mountjoy.

Shortly after that decision, lawyers for Mr Adesoji went to the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Finnegan, seeking a stay on the deportation order to allow them to consider whether to launch new proceedings by way of judicial review.

Mr Justice Finnegan was told that a letter had been written to the Minister for Justice seeking to stop the deportation and that a response was awaited.

He put a stay of 24 hours on the deportation order.

Mr Adesoji had been in Ireland since 1999.