County lines gang leader avoids deportation to Nigeria after ECHR claim

Convicted drug dealer claims removal from UK would breach rights to family life and affect mental health treatment

A county lines gang leader who dealt drugs since he was a teenager has avoided deportation to Nigeria after claiming it would breach his rights to a family life under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The Nigerian, who was jailed for eight years for supplying drugs, also successfully argued that he could not be returned to the West African country because it did not have adequate psychiatric care to treat his mental health problems.
The 29-year-old, who has been granted anonymity by the courts, claimed it would be a breach of his Article 3 rights under the ECHR because deportation would be inhuman and degrading by denying him the medical treatment he needed.
His claim against deportation was initially rejected by an immigration tribunal amid allegations that some of his claims about his family were “a work of fiction”, but the removal order was overturned on appeal.
The tribunal was told he came to Britain from Nigeria at the age of 10, but remained in the country illegally after overstaying his visa.
He was dealing drugs by the age of 15 and was convicted six years later in 2016 of possession with intent to supply both cocaine and heroin.
Despite being handed a suspended jail sentence for that offence, he continued to run an “efficient” drugs line in Farnborough, using “people he knew and could trust, including a young man who was only 17”, according to the court documents.
He and his girlfriend were making up to £5,000 a week from their drugs network, which he “masterminded”, advertising for clients on social media. A police investigation resulted in his conviction and sentencing to eight years in jail in July 2018.
The Home Office sought to deport him on his release on the basis that he was a danger to the public with a “significant number” of criminal convictions and having spent periods in and out of jail.
It rejected his claims that his removal to Nigeria would breach his right to a family life and damage his mental health.
His lawyers said that he would struggle to reintegrate into Nigerian life if deported, claiming his half-brother, who had previously been deported to Nigeria, would not be able to help him.
His mother told the tribunal that his grandmother and aunt in Nigeria were dead, so also could not support him.
But the court was told: “The evidence of [his] mother, that these relatives had died, was emphatically rejected as a work of fiction … It was noted that no death certificates had been obtained or produced in support of the claims.
“[His] mother’s reasons for not revealing the deaths to any other family members until the date of hearing was treated as manifestly implausible.”
The lower tribunal also rejected claims that his deportation would be “unduly harsh” on his partner and their child, because it judged she had a “wide and supportive family structure” around her and had been able to cope without him while he was in jail.
It also threw out claims that the necessary treatment for his mental ill health would not be available in Nigeria.
However, the upper tribunal hearing his appeal against the lower court’s judgment found there had been errors in law, in that the judge had failed to apply the correct standard of proof.
It concluded that the judge had also failed to undertake the necessary “delicate and holistic assessment” of his ties to the UK from having lived in the country since he was 10 years-old.
Because of these “errors on points of law”, it upheld the appeal and remitted it to be considered again by a fresh judge.
The case comes a day after a report, backed by Lord Howard, the former home secretary, called for reform of the human rights law to prevent it subverting the will of Parliament.
It follows a series of similar recent cases including an Albanian wanted for murder in his home country and another who sneaked back into Britain after being deported won the right to stay in the UK under the ECHR.