Italy's first black Senator is a
member of the anti-migrant League, Nigerian-origin Toni Iwobi,
now a Bergamo resident who has been in Matteo Salvini's party
for more than 20 years.
Iwobi, 62, is an IT entrepreneur.
He became a town councillor for the League at Spirano in
1995.
Since then he has been a committed activist and has become
the party's immigration and security chief, speaking regularly
on Italian TV.
Iwobi has been in Italy for 38 years.
Iwobi led the League's campaign on Italy's immigration
crisis, under the slogan "stop the invasion".
Some 600,000 undocumented migrants have arrived in Italy from
Libya since 2014, stoking fears and social tensions.
The emergency was a top campaign issue along with economic
woes, even though the centre-left government managed to
drastically cut arrivals thanks to deals in Libya.
Asked about Iwobi Tuesday, Salvini said "racism in Italy is
only on the left".
A former centre-left MP of Congolese origins, Jean Leonard
Touadi, said: "I have always been struck by Senator Iwobi's
Stockholm Syndrome who acted as a loudspeaker for his captors'
anti-African proclamations".
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