How Genuine is Rotimi Adebari?

The story has been carried by virtually all notable news sources since Friday about one Rotimi Adebari becoming the first Black mayor in Ireland. One is supposed to be wowed about such a great achievement, but there seems to be something wrong somewhere. I do not know Rotimi Adebari from any where (except that his name places him as a Yoruba man from Nigeria) and have nothing against him, but the report that he arrived Ireland from Nigeria as an asylum seeker escaping from religious persecution in Nigeria cannot be true. If indeed he claimed asylum on the basis that he was escaping religious persecution in Nigeria, he must have lied because no form of religious persecution is known to exist in Yoruba land where he obviously hails from. Nigeria was under “democratic rule” so to say, in 2000 with the full co-operation of the western world and the president was a Yoruba Christian, Olusegun Obasanjo. Any prevalence of religious persecution that happened singularly in 2000 to drive Mr Rotimi or anyone out of Nigeria ought to have attracted the attention of the pesident and of course the Nigerian press (as Yorubaland is the most covered part of Nigeria by the media).

It is a bizarre claim because Yoruba land has a unique culture of religious tolerance in Nigeria. Compared to other parts of Nigeria, Yoruba societies are more civilised and liberal to the extent that inter-religious marriage is very common between Christians and moslems. It is perhaps right to say that the average Yoruba person has at last one relative (distant or close) from another religious group.
One's worry here is not that Ireland’s immigration system has been abused (as it is probably not one's business), but that dubiousness is being celebrated as a landmark achievement! This does not help Nigeria and the Black race as it promotes fraud as a way of life. One is not saying that people should not do anything possible to escape from a miserable society like Nigeria, but that rogues should never be celebrated as heroes! It may be acceptable to sneak into organised and successful societies to better one's life, but fabricating ugly lies in the bid to attract sympathy should be condemnable. Even if one must tell terrible lies like Rotimi obviously did from the look of things,to gain residence in a successful society, one should avoid public life.
I am a Nigerian immigrant myself, but I never had to and pray never to be so desperate as to fabricate blatant lies like Rotimi did in order to stay in Britain! The chief reason why Nigerians migrate abroad is “money” either to get it genuinely through hard work or to get it through fraud (or on the other hand, stash or waste stolen public funds in the case of public office holders and their relatives). Even if there are Nigerians that can genuinely claim political asylum, there can hardly be any genuine case of religious persecution for anyone from western Nigeria.
John Iteshi