Meet First Black Senator In Italy, A Nigerian Immigrant Toni Iwobi

On the 4th of March 2018, Italian citizens elected the country’s first ever black senator, a Nigerian immigrant goes by the name Toni Iwobi, who is a member of the country’s far-right, anti-immigrant League party. The 62-year-old Nigerian immigrant was previous head of the party’s immigration department, before was elected as senator in Brescia, an industrial city in northern Italy.

The Nigerian born Italian politician Toni Iwobi rides under the party slogan “stop the invasion”, in the heated mood whereby immigration was top concern for voters, despite report that about 690,000 migrants have arrived on Italian shores in the past four years, which led to sticking of racial tensions that are pushing rightwing parties to call for their arrest and deportation.

“Anybody running away from a country because of conflict and war has to be hosted,” Iwobi told the Guardian. “But anybody leaving their country for the wrong reason and traveling to others in the wrong way has to be stopped.

Immigration shouldn’t cost thousands of lives at sea and neither should it cost a cent to the host country.” “It’s an incredible honour for me to be Italy’s first black senator,” he told the Guardian. “I want to stress that the League isn’t against immigration as such – nobody in this world can stop people moving, it’s in the human DNA. But we are against illegal immigration.”

On the wake of argument about cleaning-up or getting rid of the Italian immigrant system, this is what Iwobi had to say: ” People should travel to Italy legally, just like I did. “I came on a student visa,” he said. “During that period over 40 years ago, coming here meant needing a visa. My party is fighting to restore legal immigration.”

Toni Iwobi and Matteo Salvini Shake Hands Together (Image Credit: Google Image)

Here’s All What You Need to Know About First Elected Black Senator In Italy, A Nigerian Immigrant Toni Iwobi

Born in Gusau in northern Nigeria in April 1955, Iwobi is one of 11 siblings in a Roman Catholic family. After finishing his degree in economics with specialization in marketing and business management in Manchester, UK, Iwobi then went to Italy in the 1976, on a student visa to study accounting in Perugia.

After finishing his study that time, Iwobi find Italy interesting and he later got married to his Italian wife and he later moved to Spirano, where he said he found the two loves of his life: his Italian wife and the League, then known as the Northern League. He became a councillor for the party in 1995.

Iwobi owns an IT company — Data Communication Labs Ltd, and he has been managing director of that company since 2001, although he has previously worked at AMSA (Azienda Milanese Servizi Ambientali) and has worked for a company in Roveredo, Switzerland.

Ever since he has been in Nigeria, Iwobi has been a true supporter of Federalism system of government, this political ideology made him to be welcomed fully as a member of Lega Nord, where he was particularly inspired by Gianfranco Miglio. In 1993, he was elected municipal Councillor for the party in Spirano, a position he held until 2014. From 2010 to 2014 he also served as assessor with responsibility for social services.

Iwobi is married to an Italian woman and has two children.

In 1993 Iwobi was made city councillor for the League in Spirano, a time when the party concentrated its ire on the “thieving” government in Rome and the poorer south, which it considered a drain on the economy.

But since Matteo Salvini took control of the party in wake of electoral disaster in 2013, and moved the party towards a more traditional far-right nationalism, Iwobi has made a much bigger name for himself.

– ‘Stockholm syndrome’ –

In October 2014 Iwobi was chosen by Salvini to head the party’s new Federal Department of Security and Immigration, leading the drafting of its “General Immigration Guidelines”. “Borders exist and they should be respected. We should help Nigerians in their own country,” he said in an interview with rightwing daily Il Giornale.

Iwobi isn’t the first black person to make history in Italy’s government. In 2013, Cécile Kyenge became the first black minister in Italy. Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kyenge was compared to an orangutan, had bananas thrown at her, had her speeches disrupted, and likened to a prostitute.