Reported by: Ijeoma G | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.
Five years after student activist Nurudeen Alowonle, popularly known as Omomeewa, was gunned down just metres from the Lagos State University (LASU) gate, the Youth Rights Campaign (YRC) has accused the Nigeria Police Force and the university authorities of a systematic cover-up, demanding an independent probe into a killing that has remained a mystery since August 18, 2021.
Omomeewa, a 28-year-old graduate of Educational Management and a leading member of the Education Rights Campaign (ERC), was shot dead alongside a university staff member, Waheed Majekodunmi, on the evening of Wednesday, August 18, 2021, while walking along the Iba-LASU road to catch a bus home. According to the YRC, he was killed a few metres from the university gate by armed men, in what was initially presented by the police as a robbery gone wrong. But the group insists that the circumstances of his death point to a far more sinister motive: his activism for students from poor and working-class families, and his relentless demand for better-funded public education and improved welfare for education workers.
“Five years on, his killers remain free, and the system that produced enabling conditions for his death remains fundamentally unreformed,” the YRC said in a statement issued on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, to mark the fifth anniversary of his death. The group, led by National Coordinator Michael Adaramoye Lenin and National Secretary Francis Nwapa, alleged that Omomeewa was targeted because of his socialist orientation and his opposition to the administration of former LASU Vice-Chancellor, Professor Olanrewaju Fagbohun.
According to the YRC, Omomeewa had emerged as the preferred candidate of students for the leadership of the students’ union, but the university management frustrated his emergence and subjected him to a disciplinary process that lasted for about two years before his death. “Nonetheless, Omomeewa kept organising 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, a few metres from the university gate,” the group said.
The YRC alleged that 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,” the group stated. The group also linked Omomeewa's death to the unresolved case of five academics dismissed by LASU between 2017 and 2019 over their union activities. Even after LASU's own Governing Council found on February 23, 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, according to the YRC.
The group demanded the immediate reopening of the murder investigation through an independent probe panel comprising elected representatives of the LASU Students’ Union, ASUU, SSANU, NASU, NARD, Lagos NMA, NBA, ERC Lagos, NLC, NUJ, civil society groups, and the Joint Action Front. It also demanded the full disclosure of evidence gathered by the police during the original investigation, and accountability for what it described as the “monetisation and deliberate stalling” of the probe.
The YRC further demanded the posthumous clearing of Omomeewa’s name, the withdrawal of what it described as fabricated admission-racketeering charges against him, and the release of his academic certificate to his family. It called for compensation for his widow and child, and the recall of students and staff activists who had allegedly been expelled, suspended or victimised for political activities at LASU. The group also demanded an end to LASU’s non-residential campus policy and called for an emergency public works programme to provide safe, affordable student accommodation.
The group urged the Lagos State Government to release the Visitation Panel’s White Paper and implement the LASU Governing Council’s decision to reinstate the five dismissed ASUU members. It further demanded democratic management of Lagos State’s public universities, with security arrangements jointly designed by students, staff unions and law enforcement agencies.
“We urge students and young people to honour Omomeewa not with mourning alone, but with organising. The struggle he died for continues, and so does our demand for the truth about how he died,” the YRC said.
As the fifth anniversary of his death passes, the question remains: will the authorities finally act to uncover the truth behind Omomeewa's killing, or will his death remain another unpunished crime in Nigeria's long history of impunity?
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