Femi Oluwole

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Femi Oluwole
Femi Oluwole at Birmingham's Bin-Brexit rally for the Conservative Party conference.jpg
Oluwole speaking at Birmingham's Bin-Brexit rally in 2018
Born (1990-03-17) 17 March 1990 (age 34) [1]
Darlington, County Durham, England
Education Yarm School
Alma mater University of Nottingham
Employer Our Future Our Choice

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 .

Contents

Early life and education

Oluwole was born in Darlington 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]

Career

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, 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]

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References

  1. 1 2 "It would be pretty difficult for me to. 😅". Twitter. Femi Oluwole. 29 July 2022. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
  2. 1 2 "Femi Oluwole". London: Companies House. 2019. Archived from the original on 10 June 2019. Retrieved 9 June 2019.
  3. 1 2 Gee, Harry (5 February 2020). "Femi Oluwole, the political maverick thinking outside Brexit box". France 24 . Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  4. Machell, Ben (18 August 2018). "Femi Oluwole interview: 'In just three years we will have a population that voted Remain'". The Times . ISSN   0140-0460 . Retrieved 7 June 2019.
  5. 1 2 Toma, Costanza de (4 January 2019). "Femi Oluwole, the leader of the Europeanist movement that wants to stop Brexit". NuoveRadici.World (in Italian). Retrieved 7 June 2019.
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  8. Nand, Lisa Francesca (host); Oluwole, Femi (guest) (9 October 2018). "38. Femi Oluwole; Anti-Brexit Campaigner on Nigel Farage, Chips in Brussels, Wealth v Poverty in Nigeria and a French Summer of Love" (Podcast). The Big Travel Podcast. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  9. Brown, Mike (11 March 2018). "Meet Femi, the campaigner and former Yarm School student who says Brexit is a disaster for the young". TeessideLive . Retrieved 8 June 2019.
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  12. 1 2 Ktena, Natalie (28 January 2019). "Why I'm taking a gap year to fight Brexit". BBC . Retrieved 8 June 2019.
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  14. "Perspective – 'Keep the door open for us': The fight to keep the UK in the EU". France 24. 29 March 2019. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
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  16. Jankowicz, Mia (25 April 2019). "'Nigel Farage IS racist': Femi schools Brexit Party activist". The New European . Archived from the original on 28 April 2019. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  17. Read, Jonathon (22 April 2019). "'Stop the fake news' – former Farage adviser slammed for immigration mistruths in TV interview". The New European . Archived from the original on 8 June 2019. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  18. "Femi Oluwole". The Independent . Retrieved 7 June 2019.
  19. Oluwole, Femi (22 May 2019). "The Brexit party's toxic rhetoric doesn't represent most leave voters". The Guardian . London. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 7 June 2019.
  20. "Femi Oluwole". Metro . Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  21. "Femi Oluwole". Talkradio. Archived from the original on 7 June 2019. Retrieved 7 June 2019.
  22. "The Londoner: Brexit Party chair Richard Tice warns Femi: I'll sue". London Evening Standard . 23 July 2019. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  23. Randall, Angus (24 July 2019). "Femi Oluwole: 'I won't apologise to Richard Tice'". Talkradio . Retrieved 5 June 2020.