Press release jointly issued by the All-Afrikan Students Union Link in Europe (AASULE), the Student Action for Global Justice Internationalist Society (SAGJIS), the Afrikan Migrants Anonymous (AMA), the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE) and the Global Justice Forum (GJF); London, United Kingdom. 3rd March 2016:
LUQMAN ONIKOSI MUST NOT BE DEPORTED TO DEATH IN NIGERIA! STOP THE MAANGAMIZI
We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!
Theresa May and her Home Office have, in rather dubious circumstances, decided against what many see as the valid case of Luqman Temitayo Onikosi to remain legally in the United Kingdom. Luqman is an energetic Scholar-Activist from a quite impoverished family background in strife-torn Nigeria, in West Afrika, whose postgraduate studies in the School of Global Studies of the University of Sussex, in Brighton, were disrupted by the Home Office intervention to stop his donations-funded academic pursuits in the UK. He is a very purposefully diligent Scholar-Activist who has been working painstakingly hard not only to promote better understanding, friendship and cohesion between various students, their communities and faiths but also to bridge the gap between the community-based Public Intellectuals and their Grassroots Academia on the one hand and, on the other hand, the institutions and faculties of the Establishment Academia in and beyond the UK.
Luqman was a co-founder of the trailblazing Hear Afrika Society during his years of undergraduate studies in the University of Sussex and won an award for his Student Internationalist Activism from the National Union of Students – Black Students Campaign (NUS-BSC). He brought refreshing vim into the revival of the All-Afrikan Students Union Link in Europe (AASULE) and was highly instrumental in the establishment of Africlimate. Working together with PANAFRIINDABA, Luqman sought to make Africlimate serve its purpose as an innovative Climate Justice Programme of collaboration between the AASULE and the Planet Repairs Youth Positive Action Campaign (PRYPAC) for drawing Eco-Justice enthusiasts in Europe into supporting organised and unorganised groups of Afrikan youths and students from impoverished communities in learning to creatively exercise their own self-empowering agency in driving the more concerted groundup promotion of Environmental Justice-focused Sustainable Development Education as a vital part of Global Citizenship Conscientization throughout the continent and diaspora of Afrika. No wonder he has also been making huge contributions to the efforts towards the initiative of the Decolonization of Education Toward Academic Freedom in Pluriversality (DETAFIP), with a view to its development, in and beyond universities in the United Kingdom, to galvanize the Global Citizenship Educational Campaign for Curricula of Pluriversality (GCECCOP) in Afrika and all other parts of the World.
Luqman Onikosi had to leave Nigeria because of escalating danger to himself and some of his colleagues who were playing leading roles in Free Education for All campaigning endeavours of the student and youth contingents of the grassroots movement for Decolonization, Participatory Democracy and Social Justice in West Afrika. Although suffering health difficulties and many other challenges, Luqman has relentlessly continued such campaigning endeavours on and off campuses in the United Kingdom, helping to uphold with Internationalism the resistance banners of Anti-Racism, Decolonization, Cognitive Justice, Reparatory Justice, Environmental Justice, Interfaith Justice and Social Justice, in collaboration with a wide array of Activists and their organizations, networks and campaigning formations of the Pan-Afrikan and Global Justice movements, with far reaching impact from Europe upon a wide diversity of forces for the popular democratic transformation of society in and beyond Afrika. Moreover, he is an outspoken Moslem critic of the terroristic atrocities of Boko Haram and the corrupt, repressive and maldevelopmental state disorder of Neocolonialism that allows such heinous crimes of exacerbation of the Maangamizi of chattel, colonial and neocolonial Enslavement to go on being callously perpetrated with impunity, without harnessing the ever strengthening will, desire and revolutionary potential of the masses of Afrikan people at home and abroad, together with their progressive allies, to stop the “Hellacaust” of Genocide/Ecocide!
We cannot allow such a vital figure in our resurgent communities of Pan-Afrikan, Black Power and Global Justice Resistance to be deported out of the UK to a death we believe state and non-state actors inimical to the vision, values and causes to which Luqman Onikosi has devoted his life have conspired to inflict upon him were he to be thrown back to Nigeria. So join us in putting a stop to the execution of this wicked plot against the life of our dear Luqman Temitayo Onikosi! Help in stopping this planned dastardly atrocity of the Maangamizi; we charge Genocide/Ecocide in order to sound the alarm in preventive defence of an innocent life and to uphold all human, peoples and Mother Earth rights!
EMail: Ama.panafriindaba@gmail.com