Nigerian, Oye Owolewa, has been elected as a member of the US Congress.
He will be representing Washington D.C. in the House of Representatives.
Owolewa a Member of the Democratic Party, hails from Kwara State.
Oye Owolewa, a first-generation Nigerian-American is, as reported by Thisday, the grandson of Chief Mrs. PC Ajayi-Obe, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, recently buried at Omofe Cathedral, Ilesha, Osun State. Oye hasn’t forgotten Nigeria but had reason to visit just once: “I was in Nigeria as recently as 2017. I visited, but never lived for more than a month. I visited my grandmother (recently passed) SAN Phoebe Ajayi-Obe.”
The report has it further: “An accomplished and astute lawyer, Phoebe C. Ajayi-Obe, was the first female SAN from the Old Eastern Nigeria and second female SAN in Nigeria.
Oye obliged further on his family background, giving his status as well. ‘My dad is from Omu-Aran and my mother is from Ibadan. They met in the States and had a family. I’m the 4th of five children. I grew up in Boston and moved to Washington DC after becoming a pharmacist. I’m 30, single and earned my Doctorate of Pharmacy from Northeastern University, Boston.’
His parents, born and raised in Nigeria, raised him with two guiding principles, a value in community service and an early exposure to science. This exposure became a love for science, culminating in him achieving a Doctorate of Pharmacy.
Upon completing his degree in pharmacy, Oye moved to Washington, DC to begin practicing pharmacy and impacting the community. Oye has dedicated his energy to educating and advocating for DC statehood and equality. He participated in the historic March 2019 lobby day, resulting in a majority of the House of Representatives supporting DC’s Statehood for the first time in American history. Soon after, Oye took his efforts to Annapolis where he joined the effort to end big money’s impact on US lawmaking. In 2018, Oye was elected commissioner of his neighborhood in Southeast DC. In this position, he served as the medium between the community and the local government.
Oye worked to bring resources to the underserved by advising DC lawmakers based on continued community feedback. He has served as a commissioner since 2018, his first elected office. As commissioner, Oye learned the value of being an advocate and community resource. Some of Oye’s most notable achievements were increasing science enrichment programmes in Southeast elementary schools, adding traffic safety measures and helping to bring a Senior Day Center to the neighborhood.
According to a US online news outlet, Dr. Adeoye ‘Oye’ Owolewa who represents Advisory Neighborhood Commission single-member district 8E01 wants to take his passion for D.C. statehood to the next level.
Owolewa had said he wants to replace Franklin Garcia as the shadow representative this year to help the statehood movement go forward. ‘believe it is a critical time for the statehood movement,’ Oye said. ‘I think D.C. is very close to being a state.’ District voters elect one shadow representative and two shadow senators to lobby Congress on D.C. becoming the 51st state.
Owolewa says the congressional momentum favours the District becoming a state and a ‘perfect storm’ of a Democratic Senate and White House. The party retaining control of the House in the 2020 elections could make the District a state within a couple of years. He said if the ‘perfect storm’ happens, he would push Democrats to put statehood at the top of their agenda: ‘The Democrats have to be accountable to us” he said. “In 2008, we had a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress but we were not prepared and therefore put on the back burner. We have come a long way since then and we need to seize the opportunity when it presents itself.’”
