Democratic Socialist Movement

For Struggle, Solidarity and Socialism in Nigeria

By - DSM

FIVE YEARS OF IMPUNITY: THE BLOOD OF COMRADE OMOMEEWA STILL CRIES FOR JUSTICE

On 18th August 2021, the Lagos State University (LASU) community lost one of its bravest members – Comrade Nurudeen Alowonle, fondly called Omomeewa. Five years on, his killers remain free, and the system that produced enabling condition for his death remains fundamentally unreformed. The Youth Rights Campaign (YRC) stands with the family, comrades, and the entire student movement to continue to fight for justice and ensure that his memory does not fade into a mere anniversary ritual.

A SYSTEM THAT KILLS FIGHTERS FOR A BETTER SOCIETY

Omomeewa did not die by accident of fate. He died because he chose a side, the side of students from the poor and working-class families, victimized education workers and social justice. As a leading member of the Education Rights Campaign (ERC) in Lagos, he fused the student struggle with the labour struggle, understanding correctly that the fight for adequately-funded, quality education and the fight for decent wages for education workers are one and the same fight against a system that treats both as expendable.

It was this struggle for justice and wellbeing of students and education workers, not any personal misconduct, that made him the enemy of LASU’s management under Prof. Fagbohun. When students overwhelmingly voted him in as their union president, management could not tolerate a socialist at the helm of the student body and rigged him out of the mandate the students had freely given him. Nonetheless, Omomeewa kept organizing students, and was met with a manufactured disciplinary case that hounded him for two years, right up to the very day armed men cut his life short, few metres from the university gate

Five years after, the Police have not only failed to bring his killers to justice but have not carried out any serious investigation into the matter.  Instead of supporting the quest for justice the university authorities are after absolving themselves from their obvious culpability in the death of a man they had spent two years trying to break.

WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR

Omomeewa’s life stood for something concrete: adequately funded public education,  democratic running  of universities including elected representatives of  staff and students, enabling atmosphere and facilities necessary for quality public university education and wellbeing of education workers and students

That is why we cannot speak of Omomeewa’s memory while the Lagos State Government and LASU management continue to sit on the unresolved case of the ASUU-LASU 5, Dr. Isaac Oyewumi, Dr. Adebowale Adeyemi-Suenu, Dr. Tony Dansu, Dr. Adeolu Oyekan, and Dr. Oluwakemi Aboderin-Shonibare, dismissed between 2017 and 2019 for their union activity, demanding a properly run university system in adherence to rules and best practices. Even after LASU’s own Governing Council found, on 23 February 2022, that their dismissal was unjust and ordered their immediate reinstatement, the state government moved within 24 hours to block it, hiding behind a Visitation Panel whose White Paper it has now sat on for over four years.

A CALL TO THE LASU STUDENTS’ UNION

We call on the current leadership of the LASU Students’ Union to commemorate the 5th anniversary of his passing by organizing activities that bring students and staff unions together to discuss the very ideas he died for and demand justice over his death.

OUR DEMANDS

  1. Immediate reopening of the murder investigation, under an independent, democratically constituted probe panel comprising elected representatives of LASUSU, ASUU, SSANU, NASU, NARD, the Lagos NMA, NBA, ERC Lagos, NLC, NUJ, civil society and JAF, free of interference from LASU management or the police.
  1. Full disclosure by the Nigerian Police Force of all evidence gathered, and accountability for the monetization and deliberate stalling of the original investigation.
  1. Posthumous clearing of Omomeewa’s name, formal withdrawal of the fabricated admission-racketeering charges, and release of his academic certificate to his family.
  1. Adequate compensation for Omomeewa’s widow and child.
  1. Recall of all students and staff activists expelled, suspended, or victimized for political activity at LASU, in his honour.
  1. An end to the non-residential campus policy and a crash public works programme to build safe, decent, affordable hostels.
  1. Immediate release of the Visitation Panel’s White Paper and implementation of LASU Governing Council’s own decision to reinstate the ASUU-LASU 5.
  1. Democratic, worker- and student-accountable management of Lagos State’s public universities, with security arrangements jointly designed by students, staff unions, and law enforcement.

We urge students and young people to honour Omomeewa not with mourning alone, but with organizing. The struggle he died for continues, and so does our demand for the truth about how he died.

Michael Adaramoye Lenin

YRC National Coordinator

Francis Nwapa

YRC National Secretary

YRC email: [email protected]