Meet The Nigerian Who May Become US President (Nigerians in Diaspora)

          Our man (Courtesy, Google)

If there is one man of Nigerian descent who is very visible and steadily riding in American politics with the capability to become the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Street, location of the White House, where American presidents rule from one day, this is our man. He is already being called "the new Obama".

He is Yale-educated. He has walked in hallowed halls , rubbed shoulders with too American politicians and has served too roles with two Democratic presidents. Yet, he keep rising. 

 He is an American attorney of Nigerian descent. Hr served as the United States Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. He was also the first president of the Obama Foundation after having held roles within the Obama administration, including Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics from 2015 to 2016 and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council.

He was born May 20, 1981, to Yoruba parents in Ibadan, Nigeria, but raised in Southern California. His father was a teacher, while his mother was a nurse. He has two younger siblings. Upon graduating from Eisenhower High School in Rialto, California, in 1999, he enrolled at and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2004. Not done, he got a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School in 2009.

After his education, he initially worked as the Director of African American Outreach for the John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign in California. Afterwards, he joined the Obama administration, where he served as an editor at the Hamilton Project and consequently, as senior advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to Jack Lew in the U.S. Department of Treasury.

He was also a negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and served as the first Chief of Staff at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Elizabeth Warren.

In November 2014, this man was nominated to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Markets, although he ultimately was not "advanced" after appeared before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in 2015. It was withdrawn by President Obama later that year. 

Instead, he was appointed Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council in 2015. During this time, he represented President Obama at G7 and G20 summits and held various high-level Treasury roles, including as Chief Negotiator for macroeconomic policy provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Post- Obama administration, he joined BlackRock in 2017, as a Senior Advisor. Earlier, he was interim Chief of Staff to BlackRock's CEO, Laurence D. Fink. On August 1, 2019, he was appointed as the inaugural President of the Obama Foundation.

During the Biden Administration, this 34 year old, was nominated again, to Treasury and in November 2020, he was nominated to serve as U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. Following a Senate hearing on February 23, 2021, his nomination was confirmed by voice vote on March 25, 2021 and was sworn in on March 26, 2021, by Secretary Janet Yellen. 

As Deputy Secretary, he played a noted role in sanctions enforcement, particularly in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. He collaborated with international regulators to encourage cooperation on sanctions. On June 2, 2024, he authored an article in the Financial Times titled "We need to put sand in the gears of the Russian war machine," addressing economic measures against Russia amidst the ongoing Ukraine war.

His name? Adewale O. "Wally" Adeyemo. Bookmark the name.