THE NIGERIA-ITALIAN SENATOR
Skin colour restrict not one’s success rate and rise,and so is the domicile. Competence,determination and perseverance serves as tools to exalt souls to their dream height.
Same as it was said that future has diversed identity; for the Weak it stands as unattainable, and for the Fearful it is the unknown,while the Bold identified it as opportunity.
Tony Chike Iwobi, a 62year old Nigerian IT expert is an Italian politician for Lega Nord, who just won a seat into the Senate as the first black Senator in the Italy’s 2018 concluded election.
Though born in the city of Gusau, Northern Nigeria, he bagged a degree in economics with specialization in marketing and business management in Manchester, UK before proceeding to Italy on a student visa, where he as well obtained another degree in accounting in Treviglio. Another higher degree exist in his CV Computer Scientist obtained from USA and Italy.
Prior to his rise through the political ladder,he already served as municipal councillor for his party in Spirano, in 1993, where reigned till 2014,but in between those years form 2010-2014,he also served as Assessor with responsibility for social services.
Iwobi, a supporter of federalism, became a strong member of Lega Nord, where he was particularly inspired by Gianfranco Miglio, and these developed his interest in propagating the importance of travelling legally,specifically Italy as he isn’t against immigration,a country which he migrated to in the 70s with student visa.
His election came through the heels of heated campaign, in which immigration was a top priority and concern for voters. Above 60,000 migrants has arrived the shores of Italy in the past couple of years, thereby stoking up racial tensions and pushing right wing parties to call for their arrest and deportation. And though recent polls left the country with a hung of Parliament,populist and Anti-european parties including the League and the Five Star Movement emerged as the biggest winners.
Extensively, the weeks preceding the election, anti-immigrant sentiment increased, with politicians all too keen on harnessing the growing backlash against the immigrants. Casualties recorded including a Senegalese street vendor who was shot dead selling leather bags and umbrella on a bridge in Florence.
Record having it as Iwobi isn’t the first black person to make history through the Italy’s government, dating back in 2013 when a Democratic Republic of Congo’s Cecile Kyenge became the first black Minister in Italy. Her feat came not easily with all the treatment she was subjected to,where she was been compared to an orangutan, and having bananas thrown at her down to her numerous official speeches disrupted.
Succinctly, Tony Iwobi was been successful in craving a profession for himself been a Managing Director of Data Communication Labs Ltd, a company he founded in the year 2001. With his marriage to an Italian wife giving him two children.