A federal court in Canada has denied the asylum appeal of Lagos politician Lateef Akingbade after claiming that the ruling All Progressives Party (APC) derailed his 2023 Lagos State House of Assembly election campaign over homosexual charges, according to legal filings sighted by Peoples Gazette.
Court documents showed that Mr Akingbade filed an asylum application before the Refugee Protection Division (RPD), shortly after arriving in Canada for a conference in 2023 following a call from his wife in Nigeria, who alerted him that police came to their home looking for him in what he claimed was a politically-motivated move by the APC to stop him from contesting in the 2023 election.
Mr Akingbade claimed the police, acting on directives from the APC, declared him wanted and were preparing to invoke the homosexual law in Nigeria to jail him, given his public support for LGBTQ community, as part of the ruling party’s elaborate plan to discourage him from contesting on the platform of the African Democratic Congress.
In his filings, he noted that he eventually gave up his 2023 political ambition and subsequently petitioned for an asylum to remain in Canada, arguing that he faced a risk of persecution and torture in Nigeria from the ruling party, which he said was targeting him due to his political profile and influence.
Meanwhile, the RPD dismissed Mr Akingbade’s claim, noting that the applicant failed to prove that he still faces persecution in Nigeria in the aftermath of the 2023 election and determined that the politician could relocate to other parts of the country including Abuja to avoid persecution instead of leaving Nigeria altogether.
Following the unfavourable ruling, Mr Akingbade filed an appeal before the Refugee Appeal Division (RAD), which upheld RPD’s decision dated April 30, 2024, prompting the applicant to apply to the Federal Court in Ottawa, Ontario to review the judgment.
In her ruling on April 1, 2025, Justice Cecily Strickland upheld the decision of both the RPD and RAD, stating that the conclusions of two panels were based on reasonable evidence. She also added there was no evidence that Mr Akingbade and his family were at risk of persecution beyond the 2023 election considering the lack of further action from the police since then.
“In my view, these conclusions were reasonable based on the evidence before the RAD,” Ms Strickland said. “It is apparent from the decision that the RAD considered that the aApplicant’s agents of persecution searched his home shortly after the election.”
She added, “However, given the lack of evidence of any further actions by the police subsequent to the search, the RAD determined that the agents of persecution, having succeeded in the goal of preventing the applicant from running in the 2023 election, no longer had the motivation to pursue him.
“On this point, I would first note that this line of argument does not appear to have been argued before the RAD. However, and in any event, the applicant’s problems with his agents of persecution began when he ran for office in 2023, and his own evidence was that this was politically motivated to keep him from being elected.”
The court acknowledged Mr Akingbade could face risk due to his own account of public support for the LGBTQ community in Nigeria, Ms Strickland disagreed with the applicant’s submission, noting that it “did not engage with his evidence regarding allegations made against him in which he had been accused of being homosexual.”
