Justice Palotta J of the federal court in Ontario, Toronto, has denied the asylum appeal of Deborah Abosede Ogungbemi, who said she ran the risk of being killed by Nigerian loan sharks over an unpaid 40 per cent interest, per court filings obtained by Peoples Gazette.

Ms Ogungbemi had petitioned the court as a last resort in an asylum appeal following rejections by the Refugee Protection Division (RPD) and the Refugee Appeal Division (RAD).

The Nigerian woman told the court she took a loan from illegal money lenders in her desperation to further her studies in Canada. Part of the loan, she explained, was also used to build her parents’ business at the time.

She claimed she refunded the actual money but was unable to cough up the 40 per cent interest, a move that later cost the death of her parents.

Ms Ogungbemi said the money lenders with powerful connections to the high and mighty in Nigeria, who had been linked to corrupt politicians, constantly harassed her parents and threatened to kill them on several occasions.

The threats compelled her parents to relocate to a different city to live in hiding.

In Ms Ogungbemi’s first asylum application, she claimed that she “lost contact with her parents after they were forced to move to a different state in Nigeria because of the threats.”

The RPD rejected her request, noting that she had a viable Internal Flight Alternative (IFA), which meant she wouldn’t be in danger if she relocated to another part of Nigeria.

The Nigerian woman appealed her denial at the RAD, introducing new evidence, including letters from three friends announcing her parents’ demise, their death certificates, and about three articles in Nigerian newspapers narrating the circumstances of their death. She also submitted a mental health report from her psychotherapist.

The RAD admitted the medical report as evidence but rejected the death certificates and articles, deeming them incredible due to discrepancies.

The RAD found that the death certificate did not match the template contained in Nigeria’s National Documentation Package (NDP).

Also at issue were the newspaper reports that the RAD noted, “got published on the same day by different publishers and the authors and titles were different, but their content was word-for-word identical.”

The Appeal Division found it strange that all three newspapers cited the same financial expert for comments about the abuses and harassment that borrowers endure at the hands of loan sharks.

“All three articles relied on information provided by OA (the plaintiff’s friend), who stated that Ms Ogungbemi’s parents died as a result of constant intimidation and harassment from the loan shark company and described the same events that were detailed in Ms Ogungbemi’s claim for refugee protection,” stated court filings.

The Nigerian woman requested an oral hearing to contest RAD’s incredibility findings, but the division declined. RAD stressed that it was not required by law to hold a hearing to determine the credibility of any new evidence.

Consequently, the RAD upheld the RPD’s decision to deny Ms Ogungbemi asylum, opining she had IFA and could relocate to another state in Nigeria.

But the Nigerian woman contested the denial, deeming it “unfair” and “unreasonable” that she couldn’t be held accountable for how Nigerian newspapers choose to report events.

She petitioned the court to intervene in the matter. But Judge Palotta, after reviewing arguments from both parties, discountenanced Ms Ogungbemi’s claim of the unfair denial of her asylum application.

The judge validated RAD’s concerns of discrepancies in the death certificate of Ms Ogungbemi’s parents that official documents ought not to be tainted.

She also said the three identical newspaper articles truly bore the “hallmarks of brown envelope journalism,” given that some Nigerian newspapers are known to take money to publish certain reports.

“I am not persuaded that the RAD erred as alleged,” Ms Palotta wrote in the ruling on August 25, 2025.

“Ms Ogungbemi has not established that the RAD’s decision was unreasonable or procedurally unfair. Accordingly, I must dismiss this application for judicial review,” Ms Palotta opined.