Disabled gold medal winning athlete to face deportation

After losing a legal battle to retain the right to remain in the UK, a disabled athlete who has earned Britain five gold medals is set for deportation back to his homeland of Nigeria.

42-year-old power lifter Vincent Onwubiko, from south-east London’s Lewisham, represented Britain at the 1995 and 1997 Stoke Mandeville Games and also at the 1996 Birmingham World Champion of Champions event.

Onwubiko arrived in the UK in 1994 and is currently married to a British woman and has an 11-year-old daughter as a result of the partnership. However, he was sentenced to five months in jail in 2007 for driving while disqualified. He had previously been convicted on two occasions of careless driving.

Onwubiko, who is confined to a wheelchair as a result of polio, was arrested by agency officials at the end of his prison sentence and taken to the removal Centre at Dover. Onwubiko has stated that the centre refused to admit him due to his not having the use of his legs. As a result, he was then taken to south London’s Brixton prison where he was eventually granted bail in January 2008. He has been in detention ever since last August following his call for an interview.

He is due to be deported from the UK today out of Heathrow Airport, although supporters have said that they may have won a stay on his deportation. Their defence is that his physical condition requires proper medical treatment and that prison was inappropriate.

The Home Office has said that Onwubiko’s deportation was in light of his string of convictions and that there were no legal actions that would prevent them doing so.