The Nigerian community in New York has been assured of inclusion in government if Democrat candidate, Eric Adams is elected as Mayor of the city.
Adams gave the assurance during a virtual meeting with the Nigerian community.
The meeting was coordinated by the Organisation for the Advancement of Nigerians (OAN) and the Nigerian-American Public Affairs Committee (NAPAC).
New York is traditionally a Democrat city and usually produce the Mayor, and the mayoral nominee is projected to win at the November election.
This means that New York will most likely see an increase in the number of Nigerian-Americans in its governance after the election on November 2.
“We want members from your community on that transition team to give us résumés and other communications of those prominent personalities – people that can be helpful in governing.
“We don’t only want you to help us when we need you to govern, we want members of your community on the Transition Team as we figure out policies and people to move our city forward.
“So, we are excited; this is a great opportunity for us to do some great things but we must get to the last leg of this journey and that is on November 2nd, as we win the general election.
“I can’t thank you enough for your commitment and dedication. For you were clear that I was your candidate and you committed to this victory we are celebrating right now. Thank you very much,’’ Adams said.
The Nigerian community had endorsed Adams as the New York City Mayoral candidate on June 5, after series of debates with the candidates and consultations among Nigerians.
Adams said the support of Africans in the diaspora, not just Nigerians, will help his candidacy. “We can easily walk away with the victory, and that is what we saw. I believe for many years, we have not engaged our brothers and sisters from the continent of Africa, and I wanted to change that.
“This is the beginning of a new relationship with our fellow family members on the continent of Africa. There is so much we can do together.
“They started with me when we went to Goree Island, Senegal, and established a city agreement with Brooklyn and we continued to build on a rich relationship with the continent’’.
Adams solicited the support of the Nigerian community in the general election, noting that there are still candidates contesting with him.
“I believe we are going to be strong enough to beat them. There are several things that needed to be done to accomplish this task.
“I need you to get the job done, the mobilisation effort that you will put in place, the thousands of phone calls, reaching out to the various groups, raising the money and other campaign activities.
“We were successful in raising the money during the primaries, raising 11 million dollars by having small groups hold events and we want to do it again.
“We need to raise 7.2 million dollars that we need; we want to encourage you to reach out to your constituency and tell them that we can raise that amount of money,’’ he said.
Mr Gbenga Omotayo, Chairman, NAPAC New York, revealed that the Nigerian community has been supporting him, and the NAPAC had delivered bloc votes from different associations that make up the Nigerian community.
“For us here at the Nigerian community, it has been a pleasure forming and building a coalition toward engaging our people in the civic process and mobilising our votes into bloc towards your mayoral candidacy.
“We are proud to say we delivered on our promise. Among many things, we did an endorsement, we organised a fundraiser and we launched an SMS banking campaign targeting 10,000 African voters.
“We also coordinated campaigns in churches, mosques and ethnic associations.
“We believe this is just the beginning; our goal is to work to make sure that your nomination translates into a landslide victory in November,’’ he said.
