Hundreds campaign to save former Brighton student from deportation
More than a thousand people have signed a petition to try to prevent a former Sussex University student from being deported.
They fear that Luqman Onikosi will die prematurely if he is sent back to Nigeria.
In the past six weeks 1,343 have signed the petition which says: “We, the undersigned, call for Luqman Onikosi to be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK on medical grounds.”
Mr Onikosi, who lived in Brighton during his studies, had the chronic liver condition hepatitis B diagnosed in 2009. He started his studies at the Falmer campus in 2007.
Doctors found fibrotic changes to Mr Onikosi’s liver and he suffers debilitating symptoms including fatigue, pain and nausea as a result of his condition.
Every six months he has to undergo a series of tests. The campaigners say that neither treatment for the condition nor monitoring is available in Nigeria.
Mr Onikosi has explored all the available possibilities for treatment in Nigeria to no avail.
Alana Lentin
The campaigners say that virology specialist Dr CI Anyanwu said: “The level of treatment available in Nigeria is mainly for diagnosis for Hepatits B.
“But there is no definitive treatment available for the level of his condition he is experiencing in Nigeria at present.
“According to his medical report, he requires intensive medical monitoring, test and treatment for which if it occur to him while in Nigeria, we would have refer him to hospital abroad where the required facilities are available [sic].”
In October 2011 and March last year Mr Onikosi’s brothers Kolade and Hanuna both died in Nigeria from complications of chronic hepatitis B.
The campaigners want Home Secretary Theresa May to reconsider the order to remove Mr Onikosi “given that the consequences are likely to be fatal”.
They said that while at the university, despite his failing health, Mr Onikosi tirelessly continued to make a valuable contribution within the university and the Brighton and Hove community.
He co-founded the Hear Afrika Society and led campaigns on issues such as racism, the environmental crisis and the economic rights of international students.
In the wider community, he was part of the Brighton and Hove Climate Connection and Brighton and Hove Black History groups.
After graduating he worked with the Nigerian High Commission in London before his ill health forced him to resign.
He is now setting up his own registered company as an education consultant and overseas student recruitment agent.
Former Sussex University sociology lecturer Alana Lentin said in a blog in The Guardian: “In austerity Britain the government has no qualms about universities accepting international students to pay huge fees to keep a virtually unfunded higher education system going.
“Foreign students are regularly referred to as cash cows by cynical university managers.
“Yet those same cows are accused of ‘milking the system’ as soon as they overstay, no matter the reason, even when it means life over death.”
