Democratic Socialist Movement

For Struggle, Solidarity and Socialism in Nigeria

By - DSM

YUSUF NURUDEEN ALOWONLE (OMOMEEWA): Five Years After

We Still Cry for Justice

 By Sodiq Duro-Orike

Five years ago, on the evening of Wednesday, 18 August 2021, Comrade Yusuf Nurudeen Alowonle affectionately known across the campuses of Lagos and beyond as “Omomeewa” was brutally shot and killed by yet to be identified assailants at the gate of the Lagos State University (LASU), Ojo. He had come to campus that very day on the invitation of the University’s Students Disciplinary Panel, to answer for the umpteenth time to a phantom case of admission racketeering that the University management had maliciously contrived against him since October 2019. His killers have never been brought to justice. The state has never been made to account. Five years later, the wounds remain open and the questions remain unanswered.

Omomeewa was a member of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM), the Lagos State coordinator of the Education Rights Campaign (ERC), and a leading student activist who had made himself a thorn in the flesh of successive anti-worker, anti-student university administrations. He opposed the imposition of discriminatory dress codes on female students, the balkanization of the admissions process to hike fees through the back door, the increment of acceptance fees, and the vicious victimization of trade union leaders on the LASU campus. His solidarity with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU-LASU) whose five elected leaders were sacked by the tyrannical then Vice Chancellor Prof. Lanre Fagbohun earned him the implacable enmity of the university management.

This also explains why he was rigged out by the University management in the election for President of LASU Students’ Union which he was widely believed to have won.

It is also instructive that the last thing Omomeewa did on the campus on the day he was murdered was to attend a meeting of the university branch of the ERC – the organisation that he had committed years of his life to build. He died as he had lived: in struggle and in solidarity.

ISSUES REMAIN UNRESOLVED

Five years on, every key demand raised at the time of Omomeewa’s murder remains conspicuously unaddressed.

The killers remain free. Despite promises of investigation made by the Nigeria Police Force immediately after the killing, nothing has come of it. No suspect has been publicly named, no arrest announced, no prosecution initiated. The official framing of the incident as “robbery gone wrong” was always suspicious and the failure to investigate it seriously has only deepened that suspicion. The circumstances surrounding the murder are linked inextricably to years of persecution of Omomeewa by LASU management, using the University’s security arm and the Department of State Security (DSS) to set him up with false charges. The question the police chose not to ask whether those who hounded him to death bear any moral or criminal culpability remains wide open.

The visitation panel set up by Governor Sanwo-Olu has produced nothing tangible for the Omomeewa case. Omomeewa’s family, comrades, and colleagues submitted memoranda to the panel seeking justice. The white paper of the panel, which was meant to address the broader crisis of victimization of students and workers at LASU under the Fagbohun era, has never been publicly released, years after its mandate concluded. This tells us everything about the Lagos State Government’s sincerity or lack of it on the matter of justice and industrial harmony at the institution.  Dr. Isaac Akinloye Oyewumi, Dr. Adebowale Adeyemi-Suenu, Dr. Anthony Dansu, Dr. Adeolu Oluwaseyi, and Dr. Oluwakemi Adebisi-Aboderin all elected officials of ASUU-LASU sacked by the Fagbohun administration have not been recalled.

Omomeewa’s own academic records remain a sore point. He had graduated from LASU in 2020 from the Faculty of Education, but his results and certificate were seized on the pretext of the pending disciplinary case, a case that the University had itself handled shabbily, postponing sittings repeatedly and refusing to call key witnesses, because at bottom it was a fabricated case designed to punish and humiliate him. He was thus denied the opportunity to proceed to the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). This was not merely bureaucratic injustice, it was the denial of the fruits of his academic labour, and a symbol of how completely the institution weaponized its own processes against a young man who dared to challenge it.

OMOMEEWA’S LEGACY LIVES

Despite the silence of the state, the memory of Omomeewa has not been allowed to die. A week after his passing a candlelight procession was organized by the LASU Students’ Union and attended by hundreds of students to mourn his demise. At the one-year anniversary in August 2022, the Education Students Association of Nigeria (ESAN-LASU) and the ERC organized a memorial walk around the Faculty of Education, drawing students and comrades in large numbers. At the two-year anniversary in August 2023, a memorial event was held on campus with over 100 past and present students in attendance. A vivid demonstration that his legacy still inspires the generations of students who came after him. At that 2023 event, comrades sold many copies of Socialist Democracy, the paper of the DSM, and opened conversations with students about joining the organization that Omomeewa helped build.

WE STILL CRY FOR JUSTICE

The passage of five years makes the call for justice no less urgent, it makes it more so. Justice delayed is justice denied, and the impunity enjoyed by those responsible for Omoomewa’s death is itself a danger signal. When the state can destroy a young activist through years of institutional persecution and then fail to investigate his murder, it sends a message to every university management and every security service that there are no consequences for targeting progressive voices.  We make the following demands:

  • Arrest and prosecution of the killers. The Nigeria Police Force must reopen and conduct a serious, transparent investigation into the murder of Omomeewa. This must include examining the role of LASU’s security arm and the DSS in the events that led to his being on campus that day, and their possible connection to his killing.
  • For an independent and democratic probe panel or public enquiry comprising elected representatives of LASUSU, NANS, ASUU, SSANU, NASU, NARD, Lagos NMA, NBA, ERC, Lagos NLC, NUJ and CSOs to unravel the circumstances surrounding this incident as well as establish the motives behind the attack and brutal murder.
  • Withdrawal of the false charges of admission racketeering leveled against Omomeewa.
  • The LASU administration must formally clear Omomeewa’s academic record posthumously, and ensure that his family receives the recognition and honour due to a graduate of the institution.
  • The Lagos State Government must release the white paper of the visitation panel and implement its recommendations in full, particularly those pertaining to victimized students and workers.
  • All sacked ASUU-LASU leaders must be unconditionally reinstated.
  • The culture of victimizing student and workers’ activists in tertiary institutions must end. Every union that has been banned, every activist who has been suspended or expelled for opposing management tyranny, must be restored.