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