Muyiwa Bisuga (38) has gone from being an "illegal immigrant" threatened with deportation to a bank clerk within two years.
The father of three is a customer service representative with the Bank of Ireland's Banking 365 telephone and Internet service in Tallaght, Co Dublin.
Despite the happy ending, Muyiwa's transition from asylum-seeker to PAYE worker has not been easy. On top of the stress and insecurity of the drawn-out asylum process, he was not officially allowed to work or study while his application for refugee status was being processed.
For somebody highly motivated and with third-level education, this was frustrating, he says. "I'd rather be active than staying at home watching Glenroe."
Under recent changes, some 2,100 eligible asylum-seekers in the State for more than a year to last July can apply for a work permit. But asylum-seekers' groups have criticised this right as "farcical" in the absence of any rights through FAS for language training or other skills.
Because Muyiwa's national qualifications were not recognised in Ireland, he had to complete a NCVA Level II certificate in telemarketing.
Once qualified, he found it difficult to get a job near Ennis, Co Clare, where his family still lives.
"I applied for about 10 jobs in customer services in the Clare region and they wrote back saying there were no vacancies and my CV would be kept in their database," he says.
"After two weeks I bought the papers again and a few times the same vacancies were being advertised by the same companies."
Muyiwa puts such behaviour down to ignorance within some companies. "If they really need someone, they will hire a coloured person," he says.
Muyiwa said he did not hesitate for a minute when he was offered the bank job in Dublin, despite the inconvenience and expense of having to leave his family in Ennis where his wife, Remi, also works.
Already he has started studying law by correspondence and hopes one day to work in the bank's legal department.
He describes the process of getting refugee status as "the most difficult experience I have ever been through in my life".
From a man whose entire family had to flee Nigeria with faked documents in the hands of illegal traffickers at the cost of £7,000, these words carry a lot of weight.
Muyiwa and his family spent 20 months in Ireland before their application for refugee status was accepted after an appeal.
They left Nigeria fearing their daughter would be circumcised in accordance with the traditions of a secret religious society to which Muyiwa's father belongs. Muyiwa's first daughter died in 1991 following medical complications after she was circumcised when she was six years old.
"When we had our second daughter we knew that when she was six there might be an attempt to circumcise her in my absence. Due to family pressure, we accepted the circumcision of my first daughter because she would have been an outcast and I would have been seen to have defiled tradition. I told my wife there might be an attempt to circumcise our second daughter and if there was she should escape."
When Muyiwa was away from home, his father attempted to have his second daughter circumcised. His wife fled with her children to Ireland, and he followed her.
"I didn't know what an asylum-seeker or refugee was," he says. "I left my job, my friends, my culture to come and join them here. It was a very traumatic experience and a very painful decision because when you flee your country you lose everything."