27/05/2026
Nigeria's Roseline Ogunro assumes office as the Mayor of Islington, London
When Councillor Rosaline Ogunro takes the chain of office as Mayor of Islington on Wednesday, 27 May, 2026, North London will gain a civic first citizen with a distinctly Nigerian warmth and a résumé that refuses to stay in one lane.
Part community advocate, part broadcaster, part choir woman, and part political organiser, Rosaline Ogunro, 73, belongs to that increasingly visible generation of Nigerians abroad who can discuss council budgets in the afternoon, Handel’s Messiah or Laz Ekwueme’s oratorios in the evening without missing a beat.
A Labour councillor, she has built a reputation around community service rather than political theatrics. She's the sort of politician more likely to solve a housing complaint than trend noisily on social media.
Before stepping into civic office, she worked with the Citizens Advice Bureau, helping ordinary residents navigate life’s bureaucratic minefields. She also spent years with the London Symphony Orchestra community, adding more than a touch of culture.
Friends and colleagues describe her as approachable, grounded and quietly determined. Those are qualities that fit the office of Mayor rather well. The role itself may be ceremonial, but in a borough as politically lively and culturally diverse as Islington, ceremonial can still mean influential.
And for Nigerians watching from afar, some of whom may remember how, as the duty announcer on Radio Nigeria, professionally and calmly handled a clutch of murderous soldiers who attempted to take over power, after assassinating the head of state Gen. Murtala Mohammed that fateful February morning in 1976, her emergence carries a familiar undertone: another daughter of the diaspora taking her seat at the table not by noise, but by steady work, public service and persistence.
Rosaline Ogunro is not the stereotype of the chest-thumping politician. She is more choir harmony than war drum! Having survived London local government politics, she knows exactly when to beat both.
By Ron Mgbatogu
