Residents of Tramore, Co Waterford, have begun a campaign to stop the threatened deportation of a Nigerian woman whose application for asylum failed.
A rally is to be held in the town on Saturday, November 25th, in support of Ms Ebi Ojoh who has been living in Tramore with two of her children, a boy aged 15 and a girl aged 8, since June.
Ms Ojoh, who claims her life would be in danger if she was forced to return home, says her children have settled well in local schools and are worried about the future. "My kids are so happy here. The people are very friendly. They stop you in the street, smile and say `hello'. It's very comforting."
Ms Ojoh says her application for asylum in Ireland was dealt with under the "fast track" procedure and rejected. Her appeal against the decision has also been turned down and now her only option is to apply to the Minister for Justice to be allowed to stay on humanitarian grounds.
The deadline for that application, which she has submitted, is today. If it fails, she faces deportation.
About 30 people attended a meeting in Tramore on Monday at which a fundraising committee was set up to fight Ms Ojoh's case. The chairwoman, Ms Alison Tuohy, said she had got to know Ebi because they had children in the same school. She said "a lot of negativity" had come out of Tramore when it was first suggested that asylum-seekers would be accommodated in the area, "and now is the time to redeem ourselves".
Ms Ojoh told the meeting her life in Ireland was not as comfortable as in Nigeria, but she had had to leave. She was a member of the Ijaw tribe which was being oppressed by other tribes. Two of her brothers had been killed and she had decided to leave when her partner and elder son were taken from their home. She claimed that while the Nigerian government stated everything was normal, fighting had "gone underground" which made things more dangerous than before.
She was not used to walking everywhere, as she now did, she said. "I've always driven . . . I'm living below zero compared to what I used to know, because I was really comfortable. But now I have peace." Others who did not have money did not have the means to leave, but she had sold her shop.
She had paid somebody who offered to get her out of the country, but did not know where she was going until she arrived in Dublin on a flight from Lagos, she said. Within days she was transferred to an accommodation centre in Tramore.
