Christina’s success marred by deportation order

AS thousands of successful Leaving Cert students weighed up their job and college prospects yesterday, one teenager was facing an uncertain future.

After a double success on Wednesday, having passed her exams and being offered a college place, Christina Onasanwo, 18, spent yesterday in church with her mother, Elizabeth, praying.

Ms Onasanwo and her five children, aged five to 18, are awaiting deportation following the rejection of their asylum application and a request to remain on humanitarian grounds.

While others begin college in September, Christina, who passed four subjects and was accepted into Rathmines College to study business, will likely be in Nigeria where her mother fears she will be circumcised.

“I think it’s ridiculous. I’ve been studying the Leaving Cert for three years now and when I get my results, they want to send us away,” Christina said.

Elizabeth, a single mother, is worried for all her five children. She is desperate not to see them sent to Nigeria.

“I don’t know. I will commit suicide, just abandon them here. I can’t face the torture of seeing them sent there,” she said. She was too distraught to speak much yesterday.

Elizabeth fled Nigeria in 1999 when her house was burnt to the ground by militant youths who accused her of stealing from them. Her activities involved speaking out against the Nigerian Government on behalf of local youth groups.

But appeals to the Minister of Justice to allow the family to remain on humanitarian grounds by politicians including Ruraí Quinn, Joe Costello and Joe Higgins, as well as school principals and concerned locals came to nothing.

Ken Duggan, headmaster of Dublin’s CBS Westland Row, which Elizabeth’s 15-year-old son Busola attends, was distressed yesterday when he heard of the pending deportation.

“I’m very upset to hear that. It’s appalling to think that they are going to be ripped out of the country like that when they are so settled. I’m terribly upset, particularly for the children. The youngest little girl was even learning Irish and Christina was such a clever student. They were people who really wanted to integrate into this country,” Mr Duggan said.

“When you bring your family in and allow them to settle in a country, it’s a horrific thing to suddenly yank them out again.

“We would be very upset to see Busola go,” he said.

Rosanna Flynn, of Residents Against Racism said she was shocked such a family would be deported.

“I’m so shocked. Elizabeth was such a good mother and person. They had a very clear case to remain here. The family and the children are so well integrated into Irish society,” Ms Flynn said.