Japa: 375 Nigerians sought Swedish asylum in 2024 — Report

Japa family

At least 375 Nigerian citizens sought asylum in Sweden in 2024, according to the Swedish Migration Agency’s 2024 asylum application data obtained by Saturday PUNCH.

Of figure, 239 were first-time claims, while 136 were follow-up “extension” requests from persons whose temporary status was about to expire.

The spreadsheets, published in Swedish on the Agency’s public “Asyl” portal, detailed citizenship by applicant type, gender, and age. It reveals that most applicants in the Nigerian caseload were working-age adults.

According to the report, women filed nearly two-thirds of all first-time Nigerian claims, with 159 women against 80 men.

The report says half of every Nigerian applicant was between 25 and 44 years old, stating that there was no application from above 64 years old Nigerian in 2024.

Children accompanied 60 adult applicants, while one child travelled alone and registered as an unaccompanied minor.

Nigeria’s volume of applicants ranked it fourth among Africans and ninth among all nationals seeking protection.

The highest number of asylum seekers hailed from Eritrea, with 2,692 applications, followed by Somalia with 1,316 and Ethiopia with 597.

Nigeria’s 375 claims came next, just ahead of Sudan (257) and Uganda (255).

Other countries saw fewer than 200 applicants. They include Morocco (173), Egypt (165), and Cameroon (132).

Meanwhile, persons from Republic of The Gambia and Burundi filed just over 100 each, while Kenya and Libya accounted for about 75 claims each, Algeria (60) and Tunisia under 60.

Other nationals were from Rwanda, Tanzania, Ghana, Guinea and Sierra Leone, with single-digit filings from Mali, Zambia, Djibouti, Côte d’Ivoire, Angola, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso and five one-off cases from Benin, Niger, Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic and Mauritania.