Nigeria is going nowhere until its people and subsequently political leaders start thinking like Reverend Raphael Warnock, the first elected black senator in the state of Georgia

Ayo Akinfe

(1) In March 2014, Reverend Warnock led a sit-in at the Georgia State Capitol to press state legislators to accept the expansion of Medicaid offered by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

(2) He and other leaders were arrested during the protest

(3) From June 2017 to January 2020, Reverend Warnock chaired the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan organization focused on voter registration

(4) Reverend Warnock supports expanding the Affordable Care Act and has called for the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act

(5) He also supports increasing Covid-19 relief funding

(6) A proponent of abortion rights and gay marriage, Reverend Warnock has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood

(7) He opposes the concealed carry of firearms, saying that religious leaders do not want guns in places of worship

(8) Reverend Warnock has long opposed the death penalty, having advocated for death row inmate Troy Davis, who was executed in 2011 for killing a police officer despite evidence that supported his innocence

(9) Reverend Warnock graduated from Sol C. Johnson High School and having wanted to follow in the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr, attended Morehouse College, where he earned a BA in psychology

(10) Raphael Warnock is pastor of the church where Martin Luther King Jr grew up and preached. He does not strike me as a man who is interested in amassing wealth. He also appears more interested in lifting people out of poverty than in sending them to heaven. My kind of man!