11,040 Nigerians seek Ireland asylum in 13 years

A****t least 11,040 Nigerians applied for asylum in Ireland between 2013 and 2025, official data obtained by Sunday PUNCH shows.

The figures are drawn from 13 editions of the Asylum Information Database’s Ireland country reports, published between 2013 and 2025 by the Irish Refugee Council for the AIDA project coordinated by the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, and built on statistics from Ireland’s International Protection Office, its predecessor, the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, and Eurostat.

A review of the reports by our correspondent showed that a full-year figure for 2014 was not available, while the 2015 figure reflected only January to July.

However, asylum applicant volume from Nigeria varied across the period.

A year-on-year breakdown showed 130 applicants in 2013, 85 in the first seven months of 2015, 175 in 2016, 185 in 2017, 251 in 2018, 386 in 2019, 208 in 2020, and 451 in 2021.

Applicants surged to 1,108 in 2022, 2,084 in 2023, nearly doubled to 4,037 in 2024 and dropped to 1,940 in 2025.

Nigeria topped Ireland’s asylum applicants table in 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024, and placed second behind Zimbabwe in 2019 and second behind Somalia in 2025.

The 2024 AIDA update noted that Nigeria’s 4,037 applicants that year accounted for 21.7 per cent of all applicants, while the 2025 update recorded Nigeria’s 1,940 applicants as 14.75 per cent of the total for that year.

Among African nationalities, Nigerian applicant volume was followed by Somalia with at least 6,514 applicants across the years it featured in published rankings, Zimbabwe with at least 4,063, Algeria with at least 3,397, and South Africa with at least 1,569.

Combined, the five African nationalities accounted for at least 26,583 applications.

This is as the AIDA reports list only the top five to 10 nationalities each year, with smaller caseloads being categorised as “others.”

Overall, Ireland received at least 80,656 asylum applications in total across the years for which full-year figures were available in the reviewed reports (2013, 2015 to 2025), as Nigerians made up at least 13.69 per cent of all applicants.

Through the decade, the number of asylum seekers in Ireland rose from below 1,000 applications a year in the early 2010s to 3,276 applications in 2015, before falling to 2,244 in 2016.

Its Department of Justice Immigration Service attributed the fall almost exclusively to a decline in Pakistani and Bangladeshi applicants.

Applicant volume then rose to 4,781 by 2019, dropped to 1,566 during the pandemic year in 2020, and then surged to 13,651 in 2022 and a peak of 18,560 in 2024, before dropping to 13,159 in 2025.

On application outcomes, Nigerian applicants faced a rejection rate of 96.7 per cent in 2012, 96 per cent in 2013, 97.1 per cent in 2016, and 94.4 per cent in 2018.

However, the high rejection rates fell to 14.3 per cent in 2021, with 65.7 per cent of decided cases instead granted humanitarian permission to remain rather than full refugee status.

Detailed decision breakdowns by nationality were not published for 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

According to the AIDA Ireland reports for the years reviewed, “Since 2003, applications from Nigerian nationals have also been prioritised and therefore subjected to accelerated procedures.”

The Court of Justice of the European Union, the reports stated, upheld the policy as lawful in the case known as HID and BA, after it was referred by the Irish High Court. It said appeals in such prioritised cases are decided on paper, without an oral hearing.

With effect from April 23, 2024, the International Protection Office began “prioritising and accelerating the processing of applications from the country of origin with the highest number of applications in a given period,” and “from April 2024, applications from Nigerian nationals were prioritised” on that basis, according to the 2024 AIDA update.

The scheme was widened in July 2024 to also cover the second-highest nationality, Jordan, and remained in force for Nigerian and Jordanian applicants as of the 2025 update.

Throughout 2025, 4,747 cases were processed under the accelerated procedure, with Nigeria again topping the list. Of 5,040 decisions issued under the scheme in 2025, 4,712, or roughly 93.5 per cent, were rejected on the merits.

Ireland’s Department of Justice also stated that 6,255 Nigerians are awaiting a decision on their asylum claim in 2025, more than double the 2,819 recorded the previous year.