Nigerian Americans are Americans who are of Nigerian ancestry. Similar to its status as the most populous country in Africa, Nigeria is also the African country with the most migrants to the US, as of 2013.
The first people of ancestry from what is now modern Nigeria to arrive in what is now the modern United States were brought by force as slaves. These enslaved people were not called Nigerians but were known by their ethnic nations due to Nigeria not being a country until the early 1900s, after the slave trade was over. Most of the people who were stolen from Nigeria were likely to have been Igbo or Yoruba.
In modern times, most Americans of unambiguous Nigerian ancestry are voluntary immigrants and their descendants. The modern generation of Nigerian migrants was initially motivated by the desire to pursue educational opportunities in undergraduate and postgraduate institutions in the United States.
During the 1960s and the 1970s aftermath of the Nigerian Civil War, the Nigerian government funded the education of Nigerian students attending US universities. During the 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. Other émigrés comprised a large number of refugees, fleeing on account of religious persecutions, endless political unrests and ethnic/tribal conflicts, the presumption of Nigeria as a failing state, or just to enhance the quality of lives for themselves and their families.
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. Nigerian culture has long emphasized education, placing value on pursuing academic excellence as a means to financial security.
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As of 2013, the World Bank estimated that 252,172 Nigerian migrants live in the US. The 2012-2016 ACS estimates that 277,027 American residents were born in Nigeria.
There are approximately 372,710 Nigerian immigrants in the United States, approximately 7 percent of whom live in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area (27,570). The counties with the highest share of Nigerian-born immigrants as a percentage of the total county foreign-born population in the DC Metropolitan Area are Prince George’s County (8.2%) and Charles County, Maryland (6.1%).
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Demographics and Distribution
Many sub-Saharan African immigrants live in Texas or along the coasts. The top cities for these immigrants are the greater Washington DC, New York, Dallas, Minneapolis, and Atlanta metropolitan areas.
Education and Occupation
Data from the ACS shows that African-born immigrants aged 25 and over possess high levels of education comparable to, if not better than, the average American population. For the Nigerian-born immigrants, the proportion that possesses at least a bachelor's degree is 60.5%. A large share of sub-Saharan African immigrants was employed in management, business, science, and arts occupations (44 percent), followed by workers in service occupations (22 percent) and production, transportation, and material moving occupations (18 percent).
Examples of Nigerian Americans in education include Akintunde Akinwande, Oyekunle Olukotun, Jacob Olupona, and Dehlia Umunna, professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Harvard University, respectively. Recent famous examples include ImeIme Umana, the first black woman to be elected president of the Harvard Law Review, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the first woman to become the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and Tanitoluwa Adewumi, a homeless child refugee who went on to become a chess prodigy.
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Economic Impact
Nigerian Americans in 2023 had a median household income of $80,711 which was higher than the total population's. Personal earnings for Nigerian American males was $67,475 and $61,208 for females, both of which were higher than the total population's which was $63,975 for males and $52,437 for females.
Their relative youth is one reason why these immigrants are net contributors to American society, the authors wrote. They are “likely to exert less pressure on the country’s pension and social security system. In the absence of significant barriers to employment opportunities, African-born immigrants are strategically positioned to make a net positive contribution to the country’s social security system.”
Table 1 showcases median household incomes among sub-Saharan African immigrants in 2024. Among sub-Saharan African immigrants, people from South Africa reported some of the highest median household incomes in 2024 ($120,800), followed by households led by Kenyans ($92,200) and Cameroonians ($91,400).
| Country of Origin | Median Household Income (2024) |
|---|---|
| South Africa | $120,800 |
| Kenya | $92,200 |
| Cameroon | $91,400 |
| Somalia | $46,800 |
Cultural Contributions
Among Nigerian Americans, traditional Nigerian attire remains very popular. Due to the large number of Nigerians living in America and the cultural enrichment that these communities provide to non-Nigerians, the traditional attire has been adopted in many parts of the country as a symbol of African ethnicity, for example, clothes worn during Kwanzaa celebrations are known to be very influenced by Nigerian traditional attire.
Various leaders of the Nigerian independence movement such as Eyo Ita, Mbonu Ojike, and Nnamdi Azikiwe were educated in the United States during the 1930s-1940s.
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