For Edafe Okporo, moving to Harlem after emigrating from Nigeria in 2016 felt like coming “into the Renaissance”—a feeling that stuck with him for each trip he would take to 126th Street, where he founded a first of its kind shelter for asylum seekers in 2020.

“Everything you have heard about the assemblers of the church in Harlem and the Black institutions, it felt like I was living my wildest dream,” Okporo said in an interview with Spectator.

Growing up in Warri, Nigeria, Okporo read Harlem Renaissance authors like James Baldwin, whose 1953 novel “Go Tell It on the Mountain” he now owns a signed, first edition copy of. All of this made being in Harlem feel “special,” Okporo said.

Nine years ago, Okporo came to the United States, fleeing the violent homophobia he faced in Nigeria. He spent months in a detention center in New Jersey before his plea for asylum was granted.

Nearly a decade later, after spending years assisting other asylum seekers in the city, he is running for District 7 City Council member this fall, challenging incumbent Shaun Abreu, CC ’14. If elected, Okporo will be the first former asylum seeker to be seated on the council.

“I slept on the streets of Newark. I came to New York and I founded the first shelter for asylum seekers. I did fight against the Trump administration with resistance, protests, organizing in New York,” Okporo said. “Eight years afterwards, on his return, I’m running for city council. That is hope.”

With Okporo in the running, the race to represent District 7 is heating up: Abreu has held the seat since 2022, but Okporo said he has garnered significant community support throughout his campaign.

Abreu became the first Latino to represent the district—which spans West 96th Street to 165th Street—in 2022. He ran uncontested in the last election, winning more than 95 percent of the vote.

While Abreu has been endorsed in the upcoming November election by multiple established Democrats, including Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, Okporo said his campaign has “the most individual contributors.”

According to the New York City Campaign Finance Board, which was last updated on Jan. 15, Abreu has raised $101,495 from private funds and $174,562 from public funds. Okporo’s campaign has garnered $35,861 from private funds and $117,055 from public funds.

“We are speaking to the voters and they are resonating. We are building the broadest democratic coalition,” Okporo said. “We are fighting against a machine.”

An immigrant himself, Okporo said that while his platform includes immigration issues, they are not his sole focus.

“We don’t have a migrant crisis,” he said. “We have a social safety net crisis.”

With around 2,000 families leaving the Morningside Heights, Manhattanville, and Hamilton Heights neighborhoods from 2010 to 2020, Okporo said that he is committed to creating social safety nets that provide support for district residents. Expanding affordable housing and protecting healthcare for retirees are among the points of Okporo’s platform that aim to make the district more livable.

“The families we lost are mostly Black and brown families. That is saying something. It is saying that District 7 is becoming economically unattainable for people to live here, and the rising cost is due to housing,” Okporo said.

Okporo attributed the changing demographics in the district to a lack of “leadership that is refusing to take money from developers who are increasing the cost of living.” At a District 7 City Council candidate forum hosted by Broadway Democrats on Thursday, Okporo said that Abreu has taken funds from large developers.

Council Member Abreu’s campaign manager, Taslim Tavarez, wrote in a statement to Spectator that “Edafe is trying to accuse a former tenant rights lawyer who lived through an eviction as a child, who led the successful campaign for a massive funding increase for the city’s Right to Counsel program, who was a decisive vote in favor of the most pro-housing legislation to ever pass in the city, who co-led the bill to end forced broker fees for tenants, who has bussed constituents to testify in favor of a rent freeze, who has been by all accounts relentless on pro-tenant policy…of being anti-tenant. Get real.”

“I faced homelessness and I also came with an immigration status and these are the two issues New Yorkers are facing,” Okporo said. “We need a leader who has the lived experience and the solutions to be able to solve the problems the city is facing.”

Renegotiating the Community Benefits agreement, a 49-page document signed in 2009 in which the University promised $150 million in benefits to the West Harlem community over 36 years, is another priority for Okporo.

Okporo said he hopes to hold Columbia accountable in its commitments to offer legal services to residents facing eviction, increase accessibility of subway stations to community members, and provide education and child care to community members.

Discussing the campus protests at Columbia, Okporo said that, as a private institution, City Council members do not have a responsibility to decide on the freedom of speech and protest rights of students.

He said he condemns “every kind of violence by the NYPD” and stands “against antisemitism of any kind.”

“If I was a council person, my leadership style is different. I would have showed up to the community,” Okporo said, reflecting on the spring 2024 campus protests, during which the New York Police Department made over 200 arrests on Columbia’s campus. “I would have listened to people, I would have participated in understanding what their concerns are, to ensure that they feel understood, even though we disagree, to ensure that the government has their back when they need the government.”

For Okporo, protecting senior residents in the area is another important part of his platform. He said that if elected, he would sponsor Intro 1096, a bill that protects healthcare for retired city workers. His policy focus on seniors stems from the fact that many of his first friends and supporters while seeking asylum were older adults.

“My first friend in America, Lillian, she and a group of members of Riverside Church, came to visit me at the detention center,” Okporo said. “She was a retired librarian, and we became pen pals.”

In his 2022 memoir “Asylum,” Okporo recounts hoping that he would be welcomed into the United States upon his arrival. At John F. Kennedy Airport, however, he was handcuffed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Residents on the Upper West Side and in Harlem who supported him throughout his journey in seeking asylum, he said, have affirmed his hope that New York City is and will continue to be a sanctuary city for migrants.

“In 2023, the mayor said migrants will destroy New York City,” Okporo said. “We all know that that wasn’t true, because most of us are either migrants from other cities coming here to look for a better life, first generation migrants, children of migrants, or great-grandchildren of migrants.”

Okporo said he believes that Mayor Eric Adams is “making our communities unsafe,” creating a fear among migrants that has threatened their sense of community.

“It’s triggering for me, because I am a migrant myself,” Okporo said, referencing Adams. “I came to New York City, and I was able to find a life here because the community welcomed [me], and I feel like it’s on New York for us to stop creating policies of fear for people that are coming here to try and create a life for themselves.”

Fighting against this fear remains an integral part of his advocacy and platform, Okporo said, and the resilience of Black Americans is “the thing that keeps [him] going.”

“For generations Black Americans have forged a new path in terms of breaking stereotypes, fighting against barriers and boundaries and creating a new ceiling for themselves,” Okporo said. “I am part of that history now. Hopefully we can be able to create a new higher ground, taking from that resilience.”