Category Archives: Press

Coverage of the campaign in the media and information for journalists.

Local community comes together to support their friend’s quest to stay in UK

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Press release

Local community comes together to support their friend’s quest to stay in UK

Friends and supporters are keeping fingers crossed as case goes to court on Thursday

Quick notes for editors:

  • Brighton-based man Luqman Onikosi will this week appeal the Home Office decision to remove him from the UK, at a court tribunal.
  • Luqman is a well-known community campaigner and volunteer for numerous causes. He suffers from a life-threatening chronic liver disease.
  • Over 7,500 people signed a petition requesting the Home Office grant him ‘Leave to Remain,’ and his case has been backed by high profile figures such as Noam Chomsky and academics from across the UK.
  • Friends from Brighton and further afield will join Luqman in court this week and are hoping he will be granted leave to remain.

Friends and supporters of a migrant community activist are hoping for good news as his appeal to stay in the UK goes before a judge this Thursday.

Brighton-based Luqman Onikosi applied to stay in the UK on medical grounds after being diagnosed with Hepatitis B and chronic liver disease while studying at the University of Sussex. His health conditions – which are fatal if left untreated – claimed the lives of his two brothers in Nigeria, where support for his condition is not available.

Luqman has explored all available possibilities for treatment in Nigeria to no avail. Dr C. I. Anyanwu, a virology specialist, confirming in evidence submitted to the court hearing that ‘there is no definitive treatment available for the level of his condition he is experiencing in Nigeria at present.’

Being forced to return to Nigeria would be a death sentence for Luqman, and he and those close to him have lived for years in fear of this outcome. There is also great concern that wrenching Luqman away from his local support network would accelerate the decline of his health into severity.

Now Luqman’s friends and supporters are hoping that a Home Office decision to remove Luqman from the country will be overturned, after he won the right to appeal his case before a judge.

Hundreds of people have gathered in support of Luqman, with local musicians and community members coming forward to speak in his favour at events held at Brighton venues Komedia and the Rose Hill Tavern. Community donations to a crowd-funder have paid for Luqman’s legal costs and over 7,000 people signed a petition to support Luqman’s need to stay in the UK. Local bus company The Big Lemon have provided one of their buses for free to help transport his many friends to court on November 15th.

Some of Luqman’s many achievements and contributions to the community include being a lecturer at the Free University Brighton, volunteering for a community kitchen project, curating a series of lectures to advance knowledge of Hepatitis, organising events for Black History Month, and setting up a support group for other people facing chronic liver conditions in the city.

A letter signed by over 400 people, including Emeritus Professor Noam Chomsky, describes Luqman as both intelligent and dedicated – and states:

“Due to the lack of medical capacity to treat his condition in Nigeria, deportation is a death sentence for Luqman. He has already watched as his two brothers succumbed to the same disease, and if sent home he would inevitably face the same fate.”

ENDS

NOTES FOR EDITORS

Further information on the campaign for Luqman is available here: https://www.campaignforluqman.org.uk/

Luqman’s plight has been featured in other international, national and local news articles such as:

The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/25/why-luqman-onikosi-remain-britain

The New Statesman
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/02/what-kind-government-sends-widows-and-invalids-home-their-death-poll-boost

The Argus https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/14292527.Thousands_raised_to_help_sick_Brighton_student_avoid_deportation/

To speak to someone from the campaign, email us.

Afrikan students’ organisation backs anti-deportation campaign

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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