Nigerian migrant rights advocate Olukunle Adetunji faces deportation from Canada despite several attempts to regularise his immigration status.
Adetunji, who spent years in immigration detention before being released, could be returned to Nigeria over his alleged unlawful stay in Canada.
According to Canadian media outlet CityNews, Adetunji described his impending deportation as “worse than being behind bars.”
He arrived in Canada in 2012 and chose to remain in the country. In 2014, he married his wife, Kimora. However, he was deported to Nigeria that same year and spent two years there before allegedly re-entering Canada through illegal means in 2016.
Hoping to reunite permanently, Adetunji and his wife decided he would seek permission to remain in Canada on compassionate grounds. However, immigration authorities arrested him.
He was initially held at Maplehurst Correctional Centre for about a month before being transferred to a detention facility in Lindsay, where he spent several months. He was subsequently moved to a facility in Scarborough and later to Toronto’s Immigration Holding Centre.
Although he was eventually released while attempting to regularise his immigration status, news of his planned deportation has recently emerged.
Expressing his anguish over the possibility of being separated from his children, Adetunji said, “I’ve been taken away from my three boys. I made them promise that I’d never leave them. And, for me to break that promise is…I don’t know, I can’t break that promise,”
As Canadian authorities prepare to return him to Nigeria, the activist said he no longer has family connections or a place to live in his country of origin.
“I have no ties with Nigeria. I don’t have a place to stay. It’s like a death sentence,” he added.
