Italy has elected the first black senator in its history, it was announced on Tuesday, and he belongs to the anti-immigration League.
Toni Iwobi, of Spirano in Lombardy, announced “with great emotion” on his Facebook page that he had been elected to the senate in Italy’s general election

“After more than 25 years of fighting as part of the League’s big family, I’m about to start another great adventure,” Iwobi wrote, going on to thank leader Matteo Salvini and his other fellow party members.

“I’m ready, friends,” Iwobi said.

According to Italy’s English Newspaper, Iwobi, 62, was born in Nigeria and came to Italy on a student visa some 40 years ago, before going on to marry an Italian woman and start his own IT company here.

Before running for senator he represented the League as a municipal councillor in Spirano back in the 1990s, and more recently headed Salvini’s national committee on immigration.

In that capacity, he helped write the League’s anti-migration platform, in which it proposed among other things to make it easier to deport migrants, to use economic incentives to get countries to agree to repatriate their nationals from Italy, to refuse to take in migrants rescued by NGOs from the Mediterranean, to renegotiate EU agreements that oblige Italy to house migrants that arrive here while their application to stay is processed, to threaten withdrawal of the right to seek asylum or benefits if migrants commit a crime or break the rules of the reception centre where they’re housed, and to stiffen existing requirements for the children of immigrants applying for citizenship to include a test on Italian “language, culture and traditions”.

While his positions may seem surprising given his own experience, Iwobi says that he does not oppose immigrants who – like himself – come to Italy legally and seek to integrate; instead, he says, his problem is with “the clandestine invasion”: people who seek to stay in Italy illegally.

Campaigning with the slogan “Stop Invasion”, Iwobi says his concern isn’t just for Italians but for migrants, who the League claims it prefers to help “in their own home” rather than in Italy – though its “Italians First” programme contains few proposals for international development aid.


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