On this page, you will find:

To find organisations working for LGBTQI+ rights, visit our Nigeria LGBTQI+ Resources page.
To find organisations providing legal or other types of assistance to refugees in Nigeria, visit our Nigeria Legal Assistance page

COI Experts

Tel: +234 805 440 9962

Email: azuzopeters@gmail.com, az.uzopeters@ui.edu.ng

Adure Uzo-Peters is a Lecturer in the Commercial and Industrial Law department in the Faculty of Law, Univer-sity of Ibadan, Nigeria where she lectures Company Law, Law and Development, and Commercial Law. She also consults for international and Nigerian-based organisations such as the International Crisis Group and Green Hope Youth Empowerment Initiative on political, legal and social issues in Southern Nigeria. As a con-sultant, she has worked with lawyers in the United Kingdom to provide Nigerian Country Expert Reports in asy-lum cases involving Nigerians; on issues including secession and harmful cultural practices in Nigeria. Adure also works as a pro-bono lawyer in Nigeria attached to the War Against Child sexual, physical abuse (WACSPA) and assists indigent women in civil litigation cases as a Staff Clinician at the Women’s Law Clinic, Faculty of Law, University of Ibadan.

In 2013, Adure volunteered as a Research Assistant for the Access to Medicines Project (a collaboration be-tween the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom and the Open Society Justice Initiative, London). In 2015, she served as National Assistant Secretary of the Nigerian Association of Law Teachers and as Secretary to the Rapporteurs Committee of the 2016 NALT Conference.

Adure obtained her Bachelor of Laws degree from University of Ibadan, Nigeria graduating with First Class Honours, and a Master of Laws degree (LL.M) from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Her research focus cuts across broad areas of global sustainability, consumer protection, equity and development.

Professor of History at the University of Arizona

Email: benlaw@arizona.edu

Benjamin N. Lawrance is Professor of History at the University of Arizona. He has conducted field research in West Africa since 1997 and published extensively about political and social conditions. He has served as an expert witness in the asylum cases for over 450 West Africans in the US, Europe and Canada, and numerous other countries, which have involved human trafficking, citizenship, statelessness, female genital cutting, gender issues, gender identity, political, ethnic and religious violence, and witchcraft accusations.

Email: gary@whrin.org

Tel: +44 74 03 97 39 64

Gary Foxcroft is an award-winning human rights advocate and social entrepreneur with over ten years experience of establishing and managing organisations in UK and Nigeria. As the co-founder of the charity – Stepping Stones Nigeria – which was established in 2005, he has developed particular expertise in the fields of education and witchcraft accusations.  This has led to Gary being widely consulted by UN bodies such as UNHCR and OHCHR, presenting key note addresses at international conferences, providing interviews for media houses and being consulted as an expert witness in a number of asylum and refugee cases. In 2012, he also established the Witchcraft and Human Rights Network (WHRIN).

Website

Tel: +1 60 97 51 35 10

Email: godwin.onuoha@gmail.com

Dr. Godwin Onuoha is a broadly trained social scientist with more than two decades’ experience in critical social science and humanities research and practice. He has extensive research experience on broad pan-African questions of state and citizenship; culture, power and identity in the modern world; conflict resolution; memory and post-war conflict resolution; post-conflict peace, reconciliation and social justice; questions of genocide; self-determination, nationalism and identity politics; conflict, resources and development in Africa. He has demonstrated skills in independent in-depth research and analysis, excellent interpersonal and communication skills in a variety of working environments spanning five countries across three continents.

Over the years, Dr. Onuoha has provided expert witness accounts and written opinions on cases of persecution and discrimination based on political associations (including party politics, social and environmental activism), religion, ethnicity, identity and culture; as well as in asylum cases, migration, human rights claims, human security issues, group and individual self-determination cases involving people fleeing from violence and conflict in Nigeria.

Email: hmharris12@hotmail.com

Tel: +44 (0)2 07 22 66 465

Dr Hermione Harris is a Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University (SOAS) from where she obtained a doctorate in Social Anthropology. She has spent many years working on ethnic minorities in Britain, particularly the Nigerian diaspora. Her special interest is in Nigerian religious practice, the subject of various publications including Yoruba in Diaspora: an African Church in London. New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2006. This includes a study of the concept of spiritual power, and its relevance to the phenomena of witchcraft and juju, as well as its centrality in Pentecostal Christianity.

She has acted as an expert witness in various cases concerning the Nigerian community in Britain, including social care, FGM, autism and witchcraft. The majority of these cases centre on the question of the trafficking of Nigerian girls and young women into the UK for the purpose of sexual exploitation, and an analysis of the juju rituals to which they have been subjected to ensure their compliance. A chapter on this topic, SexWork and Ceremonies, will be published by Ashgate in 2014.

Email: inge.amundsen@cmi.no

Inge Amundsen is a Norwegian political scientist and researcher focussing on political economy, democratization and human rights. His main country expertise is on Malawi, Bangladesh, Angola, and Nigeria, and his current research topics include parliaments, political parties, political corruption, civil society and informal political engagement.

Amundsen has an extensive experience with Country of Origin reports, with a production of over 130 expert reports for asylum cases, including many appeal cases (by beginning of 2020) for UK, American, Canadian and Dutch solicitors and law firms. He is an expert on human and political rights abuse; opposition and political persecution; political violence; sexual abuse and human trafficking; discrimination of the mentally ill and access to health care; risk of FGM; persecution and social stigma of religious, ethnic and regional minorities including LGBTI+; and the risk of return and of brutal and degrading treatment and torture.

Amundsen also has a long experience in documents authenticity assessments/verifications. 

Please note that Dr Amundsen is not willing to provide his expertise pro bono, except for in a few, non-demanding cases and for NGOs in the ‘global south’.

Email: jamesibor@yahoo.com

James Ibor is based in Calabar, Cross River Sate, Nigeria. He is the Executive Secretary for the NGO Basic Rights Counsel Initiative (BRC) and is currently working on the Niger Delta Child Rights Watch (NDCRW) project. He represents children in cases of child abuse including accusations of witchcraft, physical and sexual abuse, neglect and abandonment, child trafficking, child prostitution and sexual exploitation.

Email: j.anyaegbunam@hotmail.com

Jane Anyaegbunam was born in Agbor, Nigeria and came to the UK in 1967 to study psychiatric nursing at Surrey. She became a midwife in South End and through this occupation, in which she worked for 18 years, delivering the babies of women who had undergone FGM/C, became interested in FGM/C issues. She attended the University of Hertfordshire to study Health Visiting and practised as a Health Visitor with a specialization in Child Protection. Jane has published on and given talks about FGM/C. She retired in January 2009 and is now doing voluntary work as Health Educator for 28 Too Many, an organization working and campaigning to eradicate female genital mutilation. Jane has served as an expert witness on FGM/C on three occasions.                                                                                                                           

Tel: +234 703 44 999 44 or +234 908 17 234 80

Email: lawyertamim@gmail.comlawyertamim@yahoo.com 

Dr. Imam-Tamim, Muhammad Kamaldeen is a qualified practicing lawyer in Nigeria. He was called to the Nigerian Bar in 2006. Since his call to the Bar, he has practiced as an Associate Counsel in various medium-ranked law offices both in Kaduna, Nigeria and Ilorin, Nigeria. The Law Offices where Dr. Imam-Tamim gathered his litigation and solicitor experience include Mas’ud Alabelewe & Co, Kaduna, Nigeria (offline), Tunde Olomu & Co., Ilorin-Nigeria (offline) and K. K. Eleja SAN & Co., Ilorin-Nigeria (online – www.kkeleja.net – but the site links appear to be broken). His practice areas cover civil litigation and family law. Dr. Imam-Tamim is also an academic and member of the Law Faculty of the University of Ilorin, Ilorin-Nigeria, where he teaches and researches into Family Law, Islamic Family Law, Customary Law and Law Research Methodology. He bagged a PhD on Legal Pluralism and Family Law. He is an Alumnus of the Harvard Law School Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP), a member of the Commission on Legal Pluralism, Comparative Law Society of Nigeria among others.

Email: vickylegal@yahoo.co.uk

Victoria Ijeoma Nwogu has a Master Degree in International Affairs and Diplomacy from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, and is qualified to practice as a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria since 2000.  She has over 12 years experience on gender, migration and women’s rights issues (especially sexual and gender based violence, human trafficking and migration) spanning legislative and policy advocacy, research, and training at local, regional and international levels. At the moment, she works with the UN as the Gender Advisor to UNDP Somalia. From 2009 to 2011 she worked at the UNDP in Sierra Leone as the Programme Specialist on Sexual and Gender Based Violence, where she managed a project on promoting access to justice and service delivery to victims of sexual and gender based violence. She was the National Project Coordinator of the International Labour Organization’s Program against Forced Labour and Human Trafficking in West Africa (ILO- PATWA) from 2004 – 2006. Victoria Ijeoma Nwogu has written many independent expert opinions on human trafficking, sexual and gender based violence, and migration cases from the UK. She is fluent in English, Igbo, Hausa and Krio/Pidgin with basic knowledge of French. She cannot work on a pro bono basis.

COI Resources

The following sections contain documents that can be consulted when looking for country of origin information.

See Report here

The country guidance represents the common assessment of the situation in the country of origin by senior policy officials from EU Member States, in accordance with current EU legislation and jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

See Report here

This country of origin information report describes the situation in Nigeria insofar as it is relevant for the assessment of asylum applications by persons originating from that country and for decisions related to the return of rejected Nigerian asylum seekers. It is an update of previous reports on the situation in Nigeria (the most recent being from June 2018), and covers the period from June 2018 to March 2021.

See here for ECOI’s online database of various and wide-ranging COI Reports on Nigeria.

Document link

UNHCR Eligibility Guidelines offer a legal interpretation of the refugee criteria in respect of specific profiles on the basis of social, economic, security, human rights, and humanitarian conditions in the country/territory of origin concerned. 

Nigeria Legal Assistance

Find organisations offering legal and other types of assistance to refugees in Nigeria.

Nigeria LGBTQI+ Resources

Find organisations working for refugee LGBTQI+ rights in Nigeria.

We are always looking to expand the resources on our platform. If you know about relevant experts, or you are aware of organisations and/or resources to include in our directories, please get in touch.

Last updated June 2023