Nigerian Americans

Main article: African Immigration to the United States

Nigerian Americans are citizens of the United States of America who are or descend from immigrants from Nigeria. Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, approximately one million Nigerians have immigrated in to the United States.

Similar to their proportion of population on the continent of Africa, Nigerians are the single largest contemporary African immigrant group in the United States. Nigeria's official current indigenous population is 140 million. It is estimated that 20 million people of Nigerian descent reside outside Nigeria, with the majority living in the United Kingdom (see Nigerian British) and the United States.

History

Early history

Slave notice from Williamsburg, Virginia for a runaway "Ibo Negro"

The first people of Nigerian ancestry in what is now modern United States came as slaves or indentured servants from the 17th century onwards. Under conditions in the European colonies, most English masters were not interested in tribal origins, which often were not recorded accurately. After two and three centuries of residence in the United States and the lack of documentation because of enslavement, African Americans have often been unable to track their ancestors to specific ethnic groups or regions of Africa. More to the point, like other Americans, they have become a mixture of many different heritages, although most of the slaves coming from what is now Nigeria were Igbo.

Some Nigerian ethnic groups, such as the Yoruba, and some northern Nigerian ethnic groups, had tribal facial identification marks. These could have assisted a returning slave in relocating his or her ethnic group, but few slaves escaped the colonies. In the colonies, masters tried to dissuade the practice of tribal customs. They also sometimes mixed people of different ethnic groups to make it more difficult for them to communicate and band together in rebellion.

Modern history

The 2006 American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau stated that 37% of Nigerians in the United States had bachelor's degrees, 17% had master's degrees, and 4% had doctorates. As of that year 8% of White Americans had master's degrees, and as of the same year 12% of Asian Americans had master's degrees and 3% of Asian Americans had doctorates Roderick Harrison, a demographer of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said that the statistics for Nigerian Americans had "strikingly high" levels of education; he added "There is no doubt that these are highly educated professionals who are probably working in the petrochemical, medical and business sectors in Houston." Stephen Klineberg, a Rice University sociologist, said that he believed that the actual percentage of Nigerian Americans with post-graduate academic degrees is higher than indicated in the 2006 survey.

Many modern Nigerian immigrants have come to the United States to pursue educational opportunities in undergraduate and post-graduate institutions. Almost all of these immigrants have come from ethnic groups in the southern part of the country, primarily the Igbo, Yoruba, and Ibibio peoples, including Annang and Efik. Due to adverse economic conditions in Nigeria, some immigrants stayed in the United States and began to raise their children there.

During the mid- to late-1980s, a larger wave of Nigerians immigrated to the United States. This migration was driven by political and economic problems exacerbated by the military regimes of self-styled generals Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha. The most noticeable exodus occurred among professional and middle-class Nigerians who, along with their children, took advantage of education and employment opportunities in the United States.

Some believe that this exodus has contributed to a "brain-drain" on Nigeria's intellectual resources to the detriment of its future. Since the advent of multi-party democracy in March 1999, the former Nigerian head-of-state Olusegun Obasanjo has made numerous appeals, especially to young Nigerian professionals in the United States, to return to Nigeria to help in its rebuilding effort. Obasanjo's efforts have met with mixed results, as some potential migrants consider Nigeria's socio-economic situation still unstable.

Education

African immigrants have the highest educational attainment of any immigrant group in the United States even more than the stereotyped asian groups. It is not only the first generation that performs well, as estimates indicate that a disproportionate percentage of black students at elite universities are immigrants or children of immigrants. Harvard University, for example, has estimated that more than one-third of its black student body consists of recent immigrants or their children, or were mixed race. Other top universities, such as Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Duke and Berkeley, report a similar pattern. As a result, there is a question whether affirmative action programs adequately serve African Americans who are descendants of American slaves.

Areas of concentrated residence

The USA has the world's third largest Nigerian community, only behind Nigeria itself and the United Kingdom, where up to 1 million Nigerians reside. Like other successful immigrant populations in the United States, Nigerian Americans reside in virtually all 50 states.

Sizeable communities are concentrated in the following states and jurisdictions (in order of size):

1. Maryland: Prince Georges and Baltimore (Not Including Baltimore City) counties comprise the 3rd largest Nigerian American community; also Howard and Montgomery counties.

2. New York: All boroughs of New York City, the 2nd largest Nigerian-American community; plus Nassau and Westchester counties.

3. Texas: Harris (esp. the city of Houston), Fort Bend, Tarrant, Dallas, and Travis counties(which makes up the city of Austin); having the largest Nigerian American community.

4. Georgia: Cobb, Dekalb, Fulton, Gwinnett counties; the Atlanta area is the 5th largest Nigerian-American community.

5. New Jersey: Hudson, Essex, Bergen, Union and Middlesex counties, with a large proportion of Nigerians living in Newark. In recent years, many Nigerian Americans have left New Jersey.

6. Illinois: Cook County (esp. the city of Chicago).

7. California: Los Angeles (city and county),Fresno, San Bernardino, Orange, San Diego, Sacramento and Solano counties; and the San Francisco Bay Area: Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

8. Ohio: Hamilton and Montgomery counties, with Columbus being the 6th largest Nigerian-American community.

9.Michigan: Metro Detroit (with significant numbers of Nigerian Americans in Flint, Michigan and Lansing, Michigan).

10. Virginia: Fairfax, Prince William and Loudoun Counties, it has the 4th largest Nigerian-American community.

African Immigrants (U.S.) Ancestries in the 2000 US Census

Ancestry	1990	1990% of US population	2000	2000% of US population	Percent change from 1990 to 2000
Nigerian	35,300	negligible (no data)	165,481	negligible (no data)	368.8%
Ethiopian	27,200	negligible (no data)	86,918	negligible (no data)	219.6%
Ghanaian	14,900	negligible (no data)	49,944	negligible (no data)	235.2%
South Africa	15,690	negligible (no data)	45,569	negligible (no data)	190.4%
Other	136,910	negligible (no data)	292,088	negligible (no data)	113.3%
TOTAL	230,000	0.1%	640,000	0.2%	166.9%

See also

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• List of topics related to Black and African people
• Igbo American
• Africans in the United States
• Nigeria
• Immigration

External links

• EveryCulture — Nigerian-Americans
• Nigerian Village Square
• Nigerians in America
• Nigerian-American Community Association (U.S.A.), Inc.
• Nigerian-American Public Professionals Association
• Nigerians in America on Gnaija
• Nigerian Languages for Nigerian Kids Abroad