Migrant leadership and political engagement often is a response to crisis. It was no different for Dr Tade Omotosho, chairman of Nigerians in Diaspora Organization of Poland. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine he set up support services for African students stranded on the Polish-Ukrainian border. He saw the injustice affecting non-Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war as a result of lacking diverse voices in policy-making.
With the support of the Multitudes Foundation, he is developing work to mobilise migrant voters in Poland and to further engage them beyond electoral politics.
Tade and I share a lot. We are both migrants who work as migrant voters’ educators. We both call Poland home. But most important we believe that our democracies don’t work without full migrant inclusion.
After 19 years living outside of the Polish borders, our conversation was a unique experience to learn about Poland, through the lens of a migrant person living in my first home country. I was positively surprised. On the surface, Poland may appear to lack diversity and be politically conservative. Poland however has proven that the country and its people can be politically open and much more progressive than other countries claiming to have liberal democracies.
Poland elected their first migrant MPs more than a decade ago. John Godson was first elected in 2010 and served two terms before retiring from politics and returning to Nigeria. Killion Munyama was elected in 2011 and served two and a half terms before resigning to take on a role in the EU.
Migrant communities in Poland are also not shy from stepping out of the shadows to call out injustice and demand democratic inclusion. Tade through his initiative has started the conversation about migrant voting rights and has no intentions to give up on pushing the conversation forward. In this podcast you can learn more about his work and hopefully get inspired.
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