Femi Oluwole | |
|---|---|
 Oluwole speaking at Birmingham's Bin-Brexit rally in 2018 | |
| Born | 17 March 1990 [1] Darlington, County Durham, England |
| Education | Yarm School |
| Alma mater | University of Nottingham |
Femi Oluwole (born 17 March 1990) [1] [2] is a British political activist and co-founder of the pro-European Union advocacy group Our Future Our Choice. [3] He has appeared as a commentator and activist on British television. He has written for The Independent , The Guardian and The Metro .
Oluwole was born in Darlington, County Durham to Nigerian parents – a surgeon father and a paediatrician mother, who both immigrated to the United Kingdom in the 1980s. [4] [5] [6] He grew up in the West Midlands but as a child lived in several different places across the country, having once attended a school in Dundee. [7] [8] He was privately educated at the Yarm School, and went on to study law and the French language at the University of Nottingham, while completing an Erasmus Programme year in France. [9]
Oluwole has interned in non-governmental organisations and human rights agencies. At the age of 27 he left his traineeship and moved into his parents' loft to become a campaigner against Brexit, telling the Evening Standard that he made the decision to quit 2 months before his traineeship ended because he was "frustrated that the pro-Remain argument was not being made effectively by mainstream politicians." [10] In pursuing this, Oluwole created the social media channel Our Future Our Choice in September 2017, which, with the collaboration of Will Dry and Lara Spirit, [11] who had launched an anti-Brexit student activism movement in universities, was incorporated as a company on 19 February 2018. [2] [5] [12] [13] The group advocated a pro-EU message from a youth standpoint. [12] [14] He supported the People's Vote campaign for a further referendum on EU membership. [15]
Oluwole regularly appeared in the media during the process of the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union. [16] [17] Oluwole has written for The Independent , [18] The Guardian , [19] and the Metro , [20] and has appeared on Talkradio. [21]
In July 2019, Richard Tice, the then chair of the Brexit Party, threatened to sue Oluwole after he alleged that Leave.EU (an organisation Tice co-founded) was "overtly antisemitic". [22] Oluwole refused to apologise. [23] [3]
During the 2024 United Kingdom general election, Oluwole was barred from a Reform UK rally in Birmingham. Despite Oluwole showing his press pass, security guards at the venue said they “didn’t know” why he was not allowed to attend the event. [24]
Oluwole is heterosexual. [25]