During the State Visit of President Bola Tinubu to the United Kingdom last week, it was announced that some Agreements were signed by Nigeria and the United Kingdom.

In particular, the Migration Partnership Agreement is aimed at fast-tracking the return of Nigerians with no legal right to remain in the UK, including failed asylum seekers and foreign criminals.

The agreement simplifies identification using “UK letters” instead of passports for returns, and offers reintegration support.

While the ‘Agreement’ is being presented as a win for border control and bilateral cooperation, it clearly risks sacrificing due process, constitutional safeguards, and human rights in the name of administrative convenience. In the first place, the use of the “UK letters” to return Nigerians is not and cannot be a substitute for proper travel documents. While the use of such letters may theoretically remove bureaucratic delays, it is fundamentally at odds with international human rights standards, as it for example lowers the threshold for deportation—potentially allowing individuals to be removed without proper verification of their identity or nationality.

This raises the risk of wrongful or arbitrary deportations.

The Agreement also lacks fair trial guarantees and is inconsistent and incompatible with the provisions of the Nigerian Constitution 1999 [as amended] which the right to a fair hearing, as it appears to facilitate removals without ensuring that affected individuals have had a meaningful opportunity to challenge their deportation. It also sidesteps established processes for verifying citizenship, raising the possibility that individuals could be wrongly identified and returned.

Apart from offending the provisions of the Nigerian Constitution, the Agreement is also contrary to the country’s international human rights obligations, including under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Nigeria is a state party. Nigeria is bound by obligations under these human rights treaties to protect human dignity, ensure access to remedies, and prevent wrongful return to harm. Any system that accelerates deportations without adequate safeguards risks violating these commitments.

The Agreement also risks violating the right to family life of Nigerians in the UK, as many of those targeted by the Agreement have clearly built lives in the UK—raising children, supporting partners, and contributing to their communities. UK courts have in several cases warned against such outcomes. For example, in ZH (Tanzania) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Supreme Court made clear that the best interests of children must come first in immigration decisions. In Huang v Secretary of State for the Home Department

[2011] UKSC 4, it was held that deportation must be proportionate and carefully balanced against the right to family life.

There is also no clear evidence that the purported Agreement has undergone legislative scrutiny or public debate in Nigeria. In a constitutional democracy, agreements that affect fundamental rights cannot be implemented solely at the discretion of the executive.

Any perceived efficiency as suggested by the Agreement cannot come at the expense of due process of law, fairness, justice, and accountability.

In Nigeria, the Agreement may be declared illegal by a domestic court on the ground that under the Criminal Code Act and Nigerian Correctional Service Act, no person may be admitted to any correctional centre in Nigeria without a court order or warrant issued and signed by a judge. To that extent, the provision of the Agreement that permits persons convicted in the UK to serve or complete jail terms in Nigerian prisons is illegal in every material particular. In other words, a person awaiting trial in a Nigerian court may be ordered to be remanded in prison custody while a convicted person may be committed to prison by a trial judge. The law never envisaged that Nigeria would be a dumping ground for persons convicted in the UK!

The Agreement must, therefore, be revisited, reviewed in accordance with the country’s international human rights obligations. It must be domesticated in line with section 12(1) of the Nigerian Constitution, which stipulates that

“No treaty between the Federation and any other country shall have the force of law to the extent to which any such treaty has been enacted into law by the National Assembly.”

Until then, no Nigerian citizen should be arbitrarily returned to the country on the ground of serving the UK’s objective of migration control. (Vanguard)

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