Four Nigerian-Americans won elective offices in the United States midterm elections held on November 3, while the result of a fifth candidate remained outstanding, according to election returns.
The successful candidates are Will Jawando, Junior Ezeonu, Oye Owolewa and Carol Kazeem, who secured positions in local government and state legislatures in Maryland, Texas, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania.
Jawando, a Democrat, won the race for Montgomery County executive in Maryland, defeating Republican Esther Wells. Partial results published by NBC Washington showed him leading with 237,383 votes (78.15 per cent) against Wells’s 66,383 votes (21.85 per cent), with 72 per cent of the expected vote counted. The son of a Nigerian father and an American mother, Jawando previously served on the Montgomery County Council.
In Texas, 27-year-old Democrat Junior Ezeonu won a seat in the state House of Representatives for District 101. Born in Onitsha, Anambra State, and raised in Texas from the age of two, Ezeonu faced no Republican opponent in the general election after defeating the incumbent in the Democratic primary. He previously served on the Grand Prairie City Council and as the city’s youngest mayor pro tempore.
In Washington, DC, Oye Owolewa, a Democrat and pharmacist, won an at-large seat on the District of Columbia Council with 69 per cent of the vote. The son of Nigerian immigrants from Kwara and Osun states, Owolewa previously served as the District’s elected shadow representative advocating for statehood.
Carol Kazeem, also a Democrat, retained her seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for District 159. She was among several Nigerian-Americans elected to legislative positions in the 2022 midterms.
Meanwhile, Nigerian-born Democrat Segun Adeyina was seeking re-election to the Georgia House of Representatives for District 110 against Republican Charles Lollar. Early partial results showed Adeyina ahead, but the race had not been called as counting continued. Adeyina was first elected in 2022 and serves as executive director of the Nigerian American Public Advisory Committee.
The midterm elections determine the composition of the US Congress and numerous state and local offices halfway through a presidential term.
