Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-003327
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/69679/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

27th October 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE RAE-REEVES

Between

YA (Nigeria)
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr S Shah, Legal Representative instructed by 786 Law.
For the Respondent: Ms McKenzie, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 21 October 2026

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant (and/or any member of his family) is granted anonymity.

No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the appellant, likely to lead members of the public to identify the appellant (and/or any member of his family). Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The appellant appeals against the First-tier Tribunal decision promulgated on 08 March 2026. The judge dismissed his appeal against the respondent’s refusal of his protection claim. Permission to appeal was granted by Upper Tribunal Judge Ruddick on 07 August 2026.

Background 

2. The appellant is a citizen of Nigeria. His case was that he had served in the Nigerian Police Force from 2007 and ultimately attained the rank of Inspector. He claimed that, after being assigned in 2018 to protect a politician, he was attacked and thereafter pursued and assaulted by unidentified or politically connected persons across several Nigerian states. He claimed that the risk persisted throughout Nigeria and that the authorities could not protect him.

3. The respondent disputed both the appellant’s claimed police service and the alleged attacks. The respondent relied in particular upon materially different accounts of the appellant’s employment in earlier visa applications, his statement to Border Force that he had never worked for the police, his repeated voluntary returns to Nigeria, and his delay in claiming asylum.

4. The First-tier Tribunal heard oral evidence from the appellant and submissions from both parties. The central issue was credibility.

Anonymity Direction

5. I have decided to make an anonymity direction because the importance of facilitating the discharge of the obligations of the United Kingdom under the Refugee Convention in the circumstances of this case outweighs the principle of open justice because of the potential risk to the appellant.

The decision of the First-tier Tribunal 

6. At [11], the judge identified the documents relied upon as evidence of police service, including training letters, transfer and posting documents, a warrant card and photographs of the appellant in police uniform. She placed that material alongside the appellant’s earlier descriptions of himself as an assistant bank manager and, later, a self-employed baker. She also recorded that, when police epaulettes were found in his luggage, the appellant told Border Force that he had never worked for the police. She found that he had provided no credible explanation for that statement.

7. At [12], the judge stated that, looking at the evidence in the round and applying Tanveer Ahmed, she was not satisfied that the documents were reliable and was not satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that the appellant had served in the Nigerian Police Force.

8. At [13], the judge considered the alternative position. She found that, even if the appellant had been a police officer, the incorrect accounts of his employment in earlier visa applications demonstrated a willingness to provide false information where he considered that advantageous.

9. At [14] to [18], the judge gave further reasons for rejecting the protection account. Those included the absence of a coherent explanation for the identity or motive of the alleged attackers, shifting descriptions of them, the unexplained ability of unidentified persons to trace the appellant across several states, the asserted response of senior police officers, repeated voluntary returns to Nigeria, and the delay in claiming asylum.

10. The judge concluded that the appellant’s account lacked credibility, that he had not established a genuine subjective fear of persecution, and that he had not shown a reasonable likelihood of persecution on return.

Grounds of Appeal 

11. Ground 1 asserted that the judge failed adequately to engage with the documentary evidence of police service. Ground 2 alleged a failure to consider the consistency of the appellant’s asylum account in the round. Ground 3 alleged insufficient reasons for rejecting the core account.

12. Upper Tribunal Judge Ruddick granted permission. She considered Ground 1 arguable because paragraph 12 did not expressly examine the contents of the individual documents or explain why they were unreliable. She did not consider Grounds 2 or 3 independently arguable, but did not limit permission because an error concerning police service was capable of affecting the overall credibility assessment.

13. I have considered all grounds advanced. The decision must be assessed by reading it fairly and as a whole.

Discussion 

Appellate Approach

14. I remind myself at the outset that there has to be appropriate judicial restraint in relation to the assessment of an appeal from the specialist First-tier Tribunal. As recently endorsed in MH (Bangladesh) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 688, I acknowledge the approach in HA (Iraq) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] UKSC 22 set out at [72].

15. I direct myself that the correct approach to assessing whether or not there is a material error of law in the Judge’s decision was explained by Brooke LJ in R (Iran) and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2005] EWCA Civ 982 at [90] and I note the examples he sets out at [9].

16. Reasons must be sufficient to enable the losing party to understand why the case was lost and to permit effective appellate scrutiny. A judge is not required to rehearse every item of evidence but must engage with the principal controversial issues.

17. In Volpi v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464, the Court of Appeal emphasised the restraint required when reviewing findings of fact. An appellate tribunal must not interfere merely because it might have reached a different conclusion and must read the decision fairly and as a whole.

18. The approach in Tanveer Ahmed [2002] UKIAT 00439 was reaffirmed in Hoxha & Others (Tanveer Ahmed; fraudulent applications; procedure) [2026] UKUT 00378 (IAC). The overarching question is whether a document can be regarded as reliable when all the evidence is considered in the round. The burden rests upon the party relying upon it. Apparent official form creates no presumption of reliability, and the respondent is not generally required to verify a document. Save where a specific allegation of forgery or fraud is made, the Tribunal need not determine whether a document is forged before deciding what weight can properly be attached to it.

19. My task is not to determine the protection claim afresh or decide what weight I would have given the documents. It is to decide whether the First-tier Tribunal’s evaluation disclosed a material error of law.

Consideration of Grounds

20. I accept that paragraph 12, if read alone, is terse. It does not set out a document-by-document examination of the warrant card, training material, posting and transfer records, Special Fraud Unit material and photographs. The question, however, is whether the decision read as a whole adequately explains why the judge was not satisfied that the documents could be relied upon.

21. In my judgment, it does. Paragraph 11 immediately precedes the challenged conclusion and identifies the evidence which directly contradicted the proposition that the documents were tendered to prove. The appellant had described himself in one visa application as an assistant bank manager and in another as a self-employed baker. More significantly, when police epaulettes were found in his luggage, he told Border Force that he had never worked for the police. He said that the epaulettes had been used merely to support an application for a United States visa. The judge recorded that the appellant did not deny making that statement and found that no credible explanation had been provided.

22. Those were not collateral or minor discrepancies. They concerned the central biographical fact which the documents were said to establish. The judge was entitled to regard an express denial of any police employment, made when police insignia were discovered, as highly material to the reliability of later-produced copies purporting to demonstrate lengthy police service.

23. Paragraph 12 begins with the words “Looking at the evidence in the round”. In context, that was not an empty formula. It followed the judge’s identification of the documents and the directly conflicting evidence. The conclusion that the documents had not been shown to be reliable is intelligible when paragraphs 11 and 12 are read together.

24. I do not accept the submission that the judge rejected the documents before making any adverse credibility findings. Paragraph 11 contains the express finding that the appellant had provided no credible explanation for his statement that he had never worked for the police. It also records the conflicting employment histories. In any event, the order in which findings are written does not establish the order of the judge’s mental process. The determination was produced after the oral and documentary evidence had been considered.

25. The documentary material was not required to be assessed in isolation from the appellant’s credibility. Tanveer Ahmed required an assessment in the round. The fact that there were several documents of different kinds was capable of adding cumulative weight, but it did not compel their acceptance in the specific circumstances by which the appellant’s own earlier accounts directly contradicted them.

26. Nor did the absence of forensic evidence or external verification by the respondent oblige the judge to accept the material. The burden remained on the appellant to show that the copies could be relied upon. The respondent had challenged the material before the First-tier Tribunal, including by reference to the provision of copies, the lack of external verification, the contradictory visa evidence and the Border Force account.

27. The judge was not required to determine whether each document was technically forged or to identify a defect in its paper, seal, typography or format. The relevant question was reliability in the context of all the evidence. The judge answered that question. Although fuller reasons would have been preferable, the reasons were legally sufficient.

28. That conclusion is reinforced by Hoxha. The Upper Tribunal reaffirmed that the reliability of a document cannot be determined solely by its appearance or by asking whether it has been proved to be forged. Form and content are distinct. The documents relied upon by the appellant may have appeared to be of an official character, but that did not require the judge to accept that their contents were true when the central assertion they contained was directly contradicted by the appellant’s earlier accounts.

29. I recognise that Hoxha requires a holistic assessment rather than rejection by formula. In this case, the judge did not merely state that the documents were unverified. She identified the documents, placed them against the appellant’s irreconcilable employment accounts, made an adverse finding concerning his explanation for the Border Force statement, and then expressly stated that she had considered the evidence in the round. Read fairly and in sequence, that was an application of the approach reaffirmed in Hoxha, rather than a departure from it.

30. Paragraph 13 reinforces that conclusion. The judge expressly considered the position even if the appellant had been a police officer. She found that the earlier false employment accounts demonstrated a willingness to give untrue information where the appellant perceived an immigration advantage. The explanation that an agent was responsible was rejected because the information was straightforward and the appellant would have read and signed the applications. That was an evaluative finding open to the judge.

31. The appellant’s argument risks reversing the proper appellate approach. It invites the Upper Tribunal to attribute greater weight to the number and apparent variety of the documents than did the judge. That is a disagreement about weight, not an error of law, unless the judge’s conclusion was irrational or the reasoning legally inadequate. Neither threshold is met.

32. I have also considered whether any inadequacy at paragraph 12 was material. Even if the judge should have said more about the contents of individual documents, the decision contains a clear alternative assessment. Paragraph 13 assumes police service in the appellant’s favour but maintains the adverse credibility conclusion arising from his previous false accounts.

33. Further, proof of police service would not, without more, establish the alleged attacks, the identity or motive of the attackers, their ability to trace the appellant across Nigeria, the absence of state protection, or a continuing risk at the date of hearing. The judge addressed those matters separately at [14] to [18].

34. At [14], the judge identified the appellant’s alternating descriptions of the attackers as members of an opposition political group and as entirely unknown persons. The judge also addressed the absence of a coherent motive and the appellant’s inability to explain why he, rather than the politicians he protected, would be pursued over a prolonged period. She was entitled to consider the asserted ability of unidentified attackers to locate the appellant through several transfers and states. Those were evidential matters arising from the appellant’s own account, not findings dependent upon rejection of the police documents.

35. Paragraph 15 records the judge’s concern that senior police officers allegedly responded to repeated serious attacks upon an officer, including an attack upon a police station, by advising him to leave Nigeria without investigation or protective measures. That conclusion must be read with the wider findings. Even if that aspect of the reasoning might have been expressed with greater caution, it was not the sole or decisive basis for the rejection of the claim.

36. The voluntary returns between 2019 and 2021 were plainly relevant. The judge did not treat them as legally determinative. She explained why repeated returns, including extended periods and visits to family, were difficult to reconcile with the assertion that unidentified attackers had repeatedly located and violently attacked the appellant throughout Nigeria. The weight given to that conduct was a matter for the trial judge.

37. The judge also considered the impact upon the appellant’s wife and young children. Given the claim that his presence attracted attackers who could trace him, it was open to the judge to find that knowingly returning to stay with or visit his family was inconsistent with the asserted level of subjective fear.

38. The treatment of delay under section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 discloses no error. The judge did not apply section 8 mechanistically or as a trump card. She considered the appellant’s explanation that he hoped matters would change, his attempts to maintain visitor status, his express statement in July 2022 that he did not wish to claim asylum, and the timing of the eventual claim after removal directions. Section 8 was one part of the overall assessment.

39. Ground 2 adds no material error. The consistency of an account repeated during the asylum process is a relevant consideration, but its weight was for the judge. Repetition of an assertion originating from the appellant did not oblige the judge to accept it, especially where it conflicted with earlier accounts made in visa and border contexts. The judge’s use of the phrase “in the round”, together with the structure of paragraphs 11 to 19, demonstrates a cumulative assessment.

40. Ground 3 is likewise not made out. The appellant can readily understand why the core account was rejected. The decision identifies the contradictory employment histories, the express denial of police service, the rejected explanation for the visa applications, uncertainty and inconsistency concerning the attackers and their motive, the unexplained nationwide pursuit, the asserted response of senior police officers, repeated voluntary returns, and the delayed asylum claim. Those are detailed and intelligible reasons.

41. The First-tier Tribunal also directed itself to the two-stage approach applicable under section 32 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. It first considered, on the balance of probabilities, whether the appellant had a subjective fear for a Convention reason. It then concluded that the claimed persecution was not reasonably likely. The reference at paragraph 20 to both standards does not reveal that the reasonable-likelihood standard was displaced by a higher one.

42. Once the factual basis of the asserted threat and the appellant’s subjective fear had been rejected, the judge was not required to undertake an abstract assessment of sufficiency of protection or internal relocation divorced from any accepted risk. The conclusion that those issues did not arise was legally open to the judge.

43. Standing back, the grounds amount substantially to a request that the Upper Tribunal reweigh the evidence. Volpi requires restraint. The First-tier Tribunal had the advantage of hearing the appellant give evidence and be cross-examined. Its conclusions were neither irrational nor outside the range reasonably open on the evidence.

44. I therefore find that the judge gave adequate reasons for declining to rely upon the documents when the decision is read fairly and as a whole. In the alternative, any want of fuller reasoning at paragraph 12 was not material because the judge considered the case on the assumption that the appellant might have been a police officer and gave multiple independent reasons for rejecting the alleged persecution and present risk.

Conclusion

45. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal does not contain a material error of law. The decision dismissing the appellant’s appeal on asylum, humanitarian protection and human rights grounds therefore stands.

Notice of Decision

The decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Bell promulgated on 8 March 2026 shall stand.

V S Rae-Reeves

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

22/10/2026