Django: Using named parameters on a raw SQL query

I’m trying to execute a raw query that is built dynamically.
To assure that the parameters are inserted in the valid position I’m using named parameters.

This seems to work for Sqlite without any problems. (all my tests succeed)
But when I’m running the same code against MariaDB it fails…

A simple example query:

 SELECT u.* 
    FROM users_gigyauser AS u
  WHERE u.email like :u_email
    GROUP BY u.id
    ORDER BY u.last_login DESC
  LIMIT 60 OFFSET 0

Parameters are:

 {'u_email': '%test%'}

The error I get is a default syntax error as the parameter is not replaced.
I tried using ‘%’ as an indicator, but this resulted in SQL trying to parse

%u[_email]

and that returned a type error.

I’m executing the query like this:

raw_queryset = GigyaUser.objects.raw(
    self.sql_fetch, self._query_object['params']
)

Or when counting:

cursor.execute(self.sql_count, self._query_object['params'])

Both give the same error on MariaDB but work on Sqlite (using the ‘:’ indicator)

Now, what am I missing?