By Grâçia Ada Obi
A record number of asylum seekers including Nigerians claiming to be gay have been allowed to stay in Britain under European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) rules.
The ECHR is an international treaty that protects civil and political rights, including the right to respect for private and family life which was incorporated into UK law through the Human Rights Act 1998.
The number of asylum seekers granted leave to stay in Britain based on their sexual orientation rose to 2,133 last year, up from 762 in 2022 and 677 in the year before that.
The Home Office granted the claims to stay after those seeking asylum proved that returning to their homeland would be inhumane because of their sexuality.
The UK has accepted that people who would be criminalised or open to persecution because of their sexual orientation can claim asylum under the European Convention on Human Rights.
The number of asylum seekers being granted permission to stay based on their sexuality is an even more significant rise from the tally in 2019, when 475 successful claims were made.
Some of the rise in people being granted asylum by this route in the past year has been because of a backlog of applications, which built up during the pandemic.
However, sceptics believe some asylum seekers may be gaming the system by pretending to be gay as a means of having their application granted.
Alp Mehmet, the chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said: “While it’s impossible to be sure of the genuineness of applicants claiming asylum based on their sexuality, there are too many examples of our being too ready to give the benefit of the doubt. The case of Nigerian Saheed Azeez could be the tip of the iceberg.”
The 33-year-old Nigerian was last year granted asylum in the UK after claiming he might be killed for being gay by militant group Boko Haram, but he was discovered to have fathered three children by three different women.
He also found himself in court, and was jailed for more than five years, for a parcel fraud scam. He helped to create a network of strangers and used their homes to receive parcels from online sellers who had dispatched their goods before receiving payment.
Azeez would then collect the products, bought on websites including eBay and Facebook Marketplace, before taking a cut and passing on some of the profits to his fellow fraudsters using Bitcoin.
Up to 272 victims lost a total of £220,000 after being persuaded to send out second-hand items, including smartphones and cameras that they were hoping to sell.
The nations that saw the largest number of successful applications last year were Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria.
Applicants from Albania were the most rejected. Fewer than 10 per cent of applications made from Albanians were successful.
In the year ending June 2023, 10,377 Albanians arrived in the UK by small boat, making up 24 per cent of all small boat arrivals. Some 83 per cent of them applied for asylum, according to government figures.
For eight countries, 100 per cent of claims were successful. These were people from Afghanistan, El Salvador, Syria, Eritrea, Myanmar (Burma), Libya, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Yemen.
A Home Office spokesman said: “It is important we clear through the asylum backlog and provide protection to individuals fleeing persecution.
“Our processes are underpinned by a robust framework of safeguards and quality checks, ensuring that claims are properly considered, decisions are sound, and that protection is granted to those who genuinely need it.”