Nigerian to be Poland's first black lawmaker

A Nigerian-born Protestant pastor will become Poland's first black member of parliament, a landmark in the overwhelmingly Catholic country which has a tiny minority community, he told AFP Monday.

"I think this is a historic change," said John Godson, 40, after it become clear he would enter the lower house of parliament, or Sejm.

"I think that Poland has changed a long way. Comparing Poland to when I came here almost 20 years ago, in 1993, there's a lot of difference. I think these are very positive changes," he said.

Godson, a councillor in Poland's second city Lodz, made an unsuccessful Sejm bid in the 2007 general election.

He has now obtained a seat after a fellow member of the governing liberal Civic Platform quit parliament having won office as mayor of Lodz in local elections Sunday.

In Poland's political system, by-elections are not the norm when a lawmaker resigns. Instead, the seat goes to the best-loser candidate from a party's list in the previous election.

Godson said he would learn in coming days when he was due to be sworn in.

He first came to Poland as a Protestant missionary -- in a nation where over 90 percent of the population is Catholic -- and also taught English at a polytechnic in the northwestern port city Szczecin.

Source: Thumbtribe