Update - 29 Year Old African Man Playing High School Hoops Says He Didn't Lie About His Age, He Just Had Absolutely No Clue How Old He Was

The Star – A 29-year-old South Sudanese man told officials he wasn’t lying when he allegedly posed as a teenager to attend high school in Canada — he just didn’t know his real age.

Wearing a loose orange jumpsuit, Jonathan Elia Nicola, who has been held by immigration since April 15, attended a brief detention hearing in Windsor on Tuesday and was ordered to remain in custody because he was considered a flight risk.

He did not provide further testimony at the hearing, but at an earlier detention review, the 6-foot-9 Nicola, who was enrolled in Grade 11 and played basketball on his Windsor high school team, said he did not know how old he really was because his mother kept telling him different ages.

“I aways keep asking what is the specific age that I was born, and she has told me that she could not remember,” he told the April 19 hearing.

“Over (in South Sudan) . . . not every year we study . . . we always keep moving to different schools, and over there, they do not ask your age. They do not ask you nothing,” Nicola said.

All he wanted, he told officials, was to get a good education in Canada so he could support his family back home.

“I am not a liar person. I am religious. I pray to God . . . If something bad happen to me here, I do not know what would happen to my mother back home because she is really sick. She has diabetes,” Nicola said.

“I did not came (sic) here to harm any people or do something bad. All my goal is to study and get the education, so I can go back home, I can help my mother, I can help all my rest of the family.”

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Little story update on that 17 year old high school hoops star who, whoops, turned out to be a 29 or 30 year old African man.

First of all, I’m a man with principles, so as much as it pains me I gotta give credit where credit is due.

And for the record I 1,000% believe Jonathan here. Not even a question in my mind that he’s telling the truth. Just read his statements and watch his interviews, the guy has literally zero idea how old he is. He’s from a fucking war zone in South Sudan! When you spend 97% of your time running and hiding to not get your head machete’d off, keeping accurate medical records and birth certificates is kind of the last thing on your mind. Got to imagine it messes with your sense of time too – 17 years alive, 30 years alive, who really gives a fuck when every day sucks so bad.

So yeah picturing him sitting in an orange jump suit in an immigration holding cell is fucked up. Who was he really hurting anyway? Besides the regular aged Canadian high school kids who kept getting their shots blocked into the ceiling tiles and nutsacks dangled on their foreheads as they got dunked on by a 30 year old 9’5″ dude. Nobody that’s who.