Four Nigerians declared winners of their races as Democrats triumph in US mid-term elections

FOUR Nigerian-Americans have won elective seats in the US mid-term elections that took place yesterday with a fifth set to be declared winner in a Georgia State House of Representatives race as counting gets underway.

In what was a nightmare night for incumbent President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, the Democratic Party has regained control of both houses of Congress. They now have a majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate, setting the stage for two years of showdowns with the White House for the rest of President Trump's tenure.

While Will Jawando, Junior Ezeonu, Oye Owolewa and Carol Kazeem have all been declared the winners of their races, Segun Adeyina, who is running for the House of Representatives in Georgia, is still waiting on the result of his election. Jawando, who contested on the Democratic Party platform in Maryland, defeated Republican Esther Wells in the Montgomery County executive race.

Jawando received 237,383 votes, accounting for 78.15% of the vote, while Wells garnered 66,383 votes, or 21.85%. Of mixed parentage, the son of a Nigerian father and an American mother, Jawando previously served on the Montgomery County Council.

Ezeonu, 27, secured a seat in the Texas House of Representatives for District 101, having defeated incumbent Chris Turner in the Democratic primary earlier in the year. No Republican entered the November general election, leaving him as the sole candidate on the ballot.

Born in Onitsha, Anambra state, Ezeonu relocated to Texas at the age of two. He had previously served on the Grand Prairie City Council from 2021 and went on to become the city's youngest-ever mayor pro tempore.

Oye Owolewa for his part won an at-large seat on the council in Washington DC on the District of Columbia Council, securing 69% of the vote, against independent candidate Elissa Silverman's 21 per cent. A pharmacist by profession, Owolewa is the son of Nigerian immigrants from Kwara and Osun states and has served as the district's elected shadow representative, a role that advocates for DC statehood but carries no voting rights in the US Congress.

Carol Kazeem for her part retains a Pennsylvania House of Representatives seat for District 159, defeating Republican Michael Bannon. Kazeem was among eight Nigerian-Americans who first won legislative seats during the 2022 US mid-term elections.

For now, Adeyina leads Georgia House race as votes are being counted as he seeks re-election to the Georgia House of Representatives for District 110. Adeyina, who was first elected to the Georgia House in 2022, is the executive director of the Nigerian American Public Advisory Committee, an organisation focused on voter education and registration within immigrant communities.