35-Year-Old Nigerian Woman Wins US State Assembly Election

A Nigerian woman named Esther Agbaje has been elected into the Minnesota House of Representatives in Tuesday’s U.S. general elections.

Agbaje polled 17,396 votes or 74.7 percent of the total ballots cast to defeat her closest rival, Alan Shilepsky of the Republican Party who polled 4,128 votes, representing 17.7 percent of the total.

With this, the 35-year-old Nigerian will be representing District 59B in the 134-member House on the platform of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), an affiliate of the U.S.

She is a graduate of political science from George Washington University, Washington, D.C., and holds a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Pennsylvania and also a law degree from Harvard University.

Agbaje has once served at the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Affairs Officer, charged with managing the rule of law projects in the Middle East,  currently works as an attorney in Minneapolis with a focus on general civil litigation and medical malpractice.