It appears several Nigerians have been actively making moves to seek refuge in other countries as official data released by the Irish government has revealed that Nigerians filed the highest asylum applications in Ireland as of August 2025.
Data published by the country’s Department of Justice, Home Affairs, and Migration revealed that Nigerians filed 1,083 asylum applications in Ireland between January and July, outpacing other nationalities.
The justice department, in the report also detailed that asylum applications in Ireland stood at 1,164 in July 2025, down from 1,735 in July 2024.
The report also revealed that in 2025, the total number of applications had dropped from 12,236 to 7,207, a development that accounts for 42 percent.
According to the report, the main countries of origin for 2025 are: Nigeria (1,083 applications), Pakistan (945), Somalia (933), Afghanistan (767), and Georgia (462).
Part of the report reads: “The number of applications pending in the IPO has been reducing since the end of September 2024, when it stood at 23,863. As of July this year, 18,323 applications were pending.
“Compared to last year, there has been an increase in the number of applications where the IPO made a recommendation or otherwise closed off a case. In July 2025, 1,755 cases were closed off compared to 1,294 in July 2024.”
Pan-Atlantic Kompass reports that the situation coincides with a recent report that revealed that in 2024, 36,934 Nigerians applied for asylum globally, with Canada, Italy, and the United Kingdom as top destinations.
According to the report, Canada received 13,222 applications, approving only 2,196, while Italy processed 4,292 claims, granting just 650.
The UK saw 2,841 applications, with a mere 446 approvals. Other countries, including Ireland (4,037 applications), the United States (2,827), and Germany, also recorded significant numbers, but approval rates remained low, with 74 percent of Nigerian claims rejected globally.
Recall also that a recent report released by Statisense, a data collection organisation, revealed that 664,384 Nigerians filed for asylum in other countries between 2016 and 2023.
According to the report, 355,792 Nigerians filed their asylum applications between 2016 and 2019 while 308,592 Nigerians sought asylum between 2020 and 2023.
Pan-Atlantic Kompass also reports that asylum is defined as a formal request for protection made in another country by individuals fleeing persecution, serious harm, or unsafe conditions in their home country.
Under international law, asylum seekers are protected until their claims are assessed, and they must meet specific criteria that are linked to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership of a social group.
While the reasons behind the high number of Nigerians seeking asylum in several foreign countries are numerous, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is facing challenges such as economic instability, political unrest, and security concerns, including insurgencies in certain regions.
Many of these factors have been cited as the major reasons many seek safety and better opportunities abroad.
Commenting on the trend, a former President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina has expressed concerns over the migration phenomenon.
Adesina said youths in Nigeria don’t need freebies under the guise of empowerment schemes but capital to fund their ideas and translate the same into enduring wealth.
He said: “In the case of young people and the Japa syndrome, it’s a big loss for us. Young people don’t need freebies; they don’t need people saying: ‘I just want to give you an empowerment programme.
“They have skills, they know, they have entrepreneurship capacity, and they want to turn their ideas into great businesses. What young people need is not those empowerment programmes; they need capital, they need you to put your money at risk on their behalf.
“We have over 465 million young people between the ages of 15 and 35. Africa should not turn what should be its demographic asset into somebody else’s problem due to the inability to believe in young people and invest in their ideas for continental prosperity.
“I do not believe that the future of our young people lies in Europe; it doesn’t lie in America, it doesn’t lie in Canada, Japan, or China; it should lie in Africa growing well, growing robustly and able to create quality jobs for our young people,” he said.
Also reacting, a former Nigerian Ambassador to Singapore, Ogbole Amedu-Ode, asserted that the surge in asylum applications was due to worsening economic conditions in the country.
He said: “The urge to travel out of the country is primarily a function of the performance of our national economy. The economic doldrums have pushed compatriots to get into the Japa mode,
“The trend may, unfortunately, increase until there’s a turnaround in the performance of the national economy.”
