FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA Nnamani v Minister for Immigration & Multicultural Affairs [2001] FCA 396 IFEANYICHUKWU NNAMANI v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS N 132 OF 2001 LINDGREN J 3 APRIL 2001 SYDNEY IN THE FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA NEW SOUTH WALES DISTRICT REGISTRY N 132 OF 2001 BETWEEN: IFEANYICHUKWU NNAMANI APPLICANT AND: MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS RESPONDENT JUDGE: LINDGREN J DATE OF ORDER: 3 APRIL 2001 WHERE MADE: SYDNEY THE COURT ORDERS THAT: 1. The application be dismissed. 2. The applicant pay the respondent's costs. Note: Settlement and entry of orders is dealt with in Order 36 of the Federal Court Rules. IN THE FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA NEW SOUTH WALES DISTRICT REGISTRY N 132 OF 2001 BETWEEN: IFEANYICHUKWU NNAMANI APPLICANT AND: MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS RESPONDENT JUDGE: LINDGREN J DATE: 3 APRIL 2001 PLACE: SYDNEY REASONS FOR JUDGMENT 1 The applicant, who is unrepresented, applies for review of a decision of the Refugee Review Tribunal ("the Tribunal") given on 23 January 2001, by which the Tribunal affirmed a decision of the delegate of the respondent Minister not to grant him a protection visa. The grounds of the application, as set out in the form of application filed on 14 February 2001, are as follows (the errors in the original are repeated): His honor erred in finding that the Refugee Review tribunal had failed to provide adequat reasons as required by the ss 430, 476 of the Immigration Act 1958 and it was not open to persuation in favour of the Member. I will read these grounds as those referred to in pars 476(1)(a) and (f) of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth). That is, the grounds are that the Tribunal failed to observe the procedure required by par 430(1)(b) of the Act to give reasons for its decision and that the Tribunal's decision was induced or affected by actual bias. 2 The applicant arrived in Australia on 18 October 2000 at Sydney Airport and was immediately taken into immigration detention and has remained in immigration detention since that time. He was assisted by an adviser at the hearing before the Tribunal. The applicant comes from Nigeria, speaks Ibo and is of the Christian religion. 3 The Tribunal had great difficulty in being sure as to what many of the background facts of the case were. The Tribunal recounted the applicant's claims, which included: · that he had lived in Kaduna in Nigeria, regularly attended the Methodist church there and was the victim of religious strife between Muslims and Christians; · that there was quite "a big fight" in Kaduna which resulted in the killing of his parents and his sustaining a machete wound to his leg; · that he was overcome with grief at the sight of the bodies of his parents who had not escaped from the house where they lived and that he went and laid down on the road, hoping that a vehicle would run over him; · that he was rescued by a Muslim man (an al-Hajji) who took him home; · that the al-Hajji drove him to Lagos, where he took him to the home of another al-Hajji before returning to Kaduna; · that he stayed in Lagos with the second al-Hajji. 4 He gave a confused account of his time in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, situated in the Christian south of the country. He said: · he stayed hidden in the al-Hajii's house because people from the Oodua People's Congress ("OPC"), a hardline Yoruba nationalist group with a "violent track record", "were coming there"; · he went out in Lagos looking for his relatives; · he had no relatives at all – no parents, no grandparents, no siblings, no cousins, no aunts or uncles. (On the hearing before me he said that he had no relatives left in Nigeria and that if he had had relatives there, he would not have come to Australia in the first place.) 5 The applicant claimed that the OPC came to the al-Hajii's house in Lagos and killed the al-Hajii's son but spared the applicant's life on learning that he was Ibo, not Hausa. 6 The applicant said that he was driven in the boot of a car from the al-Hajji's house in Lagos to the waterfront, where he was put aboard a small boat which took him to Accra in Ghana, where he was taken by the boatman from the boat to the airport and put on a plane. The Tribunal found a number of difficulties with this story. For example, the applicant said he could not estimate the time the boat trip had taken because he was asleep, but the Tribunal observed that the distance from Lagos to Accra by sea is over 400 kilometres and that the applicant was travelling in a small craft so that he could not have been asleep throughout the trip. 7 Similarly, the applicant said the boatman accompanied him off the boat, got a taxi and the two of them went to the airport. The Tribunal did not accept this explanation. The plane ticket was, in fact, purchased in Accra but the applicant did not suggest that the boatman stopped anywhere so that a ticket could be bought. 8 The Tribunal did not accept that the applicant had made a journey from Lagos to Accra by boat. Given that the applicant did, indeed, depart by air from Accra, the Tribunal thought he must have been taken there by vehicle or by air. 9 There were other oddities about the applicant's account of events. The applicant said that he went to Lagos after his parents' death having spent about a week in the care of the al-Hajji in Kaduna. The Tribunal was able to identify the time of the Kaduna riots as late February which signified that the applicant must have arrived in Lagos in early March 2000. He departed Accra in mid-October 2000, his flight to Sydney on 18 October 2000 having transited in South Africa en route. The visa in the passport used by the applicant (it was not the applicant's passport) was issued on 28 September 2000 in Lagos. Unless someone went to the trouble of sending him the passport, it is reasonable to assume that he was in Lagos to receive the passport with the visa. Hence, according to the Tribunal, he had been in Lagos for some seven months, yet the account he gave suggested that he was there for no more than a month or two at the most. 10 The Tribunal, as I said, had great difficulty being sure what many of the underlying facts were and did not accept the applicant's account of what had happened to him. Nonetheless it proceeded to consider the case on the assumption that the claims the applicant made should be dealt with. The applicant claimed to fear persecution by Muslims, by fellow Christians (on the basis that he was an "Osu" or outcast) and from the OPC. The Tribunal gave reasons why all three claims were not accepted by it. 11 The Tribunal gave clear reasons for its decision and there is not the slightest suggestion of actual bias to be found in its reasons for decision and there is no independent evidence of such bias. Accordingly the two grounds relied upon are not made out. 12 (Before concluding, I note the presiding Member's observations that "the majority of the applicant's claims [were] similar to those currently being put forward by a number of other Nigerian applicants who [were] detained with him at Villawood", that "a number of details [were] identical with those that [had] been put to [the presiding Member] in recent weeks by other applicants" and that the applicant "seem[ed] to be the unfortunate pawn in some external people-movement activity".) 13 For the above reasons, the Court orders that: (1) the application be dismissed; (2) the applicant pay the respondent's costs. I certify that the preceding thirteen (13) numbered paragraphs are a true copy of the Reasons for Judgment herein of the Honourable Justice Lindgren. Associate: Dated: 6 April 2001 The Applicant appeared unrepresented. Counsel for the Respondent: Mr J Smith Solicitor for the Respondent: Clayton Utz Date of Hearing: 3 April 2001 Date of Judgment: 3 April 2001