United States President-elect Joe Biden has recently appointed a Nigerian-born Funmi Olorunnipa Badejo as a White House counsel.
Badejo, a lawyer and an alumna of Berkeley Law College in the US, was named among the additional 20 new members of the office of the White House counsel.
According to the statement, Badejo has served as a counsel for policy to the assistant attorney general in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Ethics Counsel at the White House Counsel’s Office and Attorney Advisor at the Administrative Conference of the United States during the Obama-Biden administration.
“She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the University of Florida. Originally from Florida, Olorunnipa Badejo lives in Washington D.C. with her husband and son,” the statement read.
She was also a general counsel of the House Selected Subcommittee on the Coronavirus crisis which was chaired by James Clyburn, house majority whip.
Badejo is not however, the first Nigerian-American to be appointed by the US president-elect. Adewale Adeyemo was recently announced as deputy secretary of the treasury department.
Adeyemo was born in Nigeria and raised in Southern California. His father was a teacher and his mother was a nurse. He has two younger siblings. After graduating from Eisenhower High School in Rialto, California, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley and Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.
Another Nigerian American, Osaremen Okolo, was also appointed a member of Biden’s COVID-19 response team.
Okolo, born to a Nigerian parents, was among the 100 names announced as additional members of the White House staff by the Biden transition team. Okolo served as a senior health policy advisor to US representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, before joining the team.
She also served as legislative aide for health policy on the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labour and Pensions (HELP).
With these appointments, is that a sign that Biden has a secret passion for the Nigerian-Americans living in the United States? despite the huddles in Nigeria as a whole, this has none-the-less, made Nigeria to be back in the World’s headlines once more.
