Friends hope for last-minute reprieve for Ola (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Friends hope for last-minute reprieve for Ola

6:47pm Tuesday 2nd October 2012 in News

Bradford supporters of a gay Nigerian asylum seeker about to be deported are desperately hoping for a last minute reprieve tonight.

Ola Ayelokun was supposed to be flown back to Africa this Saturday on a judge’s orders, but friends got news the flight details had been brought forward by four days.

The 28-year-old, who had been living in Bradford for one year and was a nursing student, was moved from a detention centre in Lincolnshire on Monday to the UK’s most secure removal centre near Heathrow.

Mr Ayelokun’s solicitor had been racing against time to go to the High Court to overturn the immigration judge’s orders while friends had set up an on-line petition and a facebook group to block his deportation.

The removal order had been made after the judge at Bradford's Immigration Court refused to believe Mr Ayelokun was a homosexual. The UK Border Agency says Mr Ayelokun has lived illegally in the UK since overstaying a visit visa that expired in 2003 and it was only in 2011 he claimed asylum.