By Molly Fosco
At an Onyejekwe family get-together, you can’t throw a stone
without hitting someone with a master’s degree. Doctors, lawyers, engineers,
professors — every family member is highly educated and professionally
successful, and many have a lucrative side gig to boot. Parents and
grandparents share stories of whose kid just won an academic honor, achieved an
athletic title or performed in the school play. Aunts, uncles and cousins
celebrate one another’s job promotions or the new nonprofit one of them just
started. To the Ohio-based Onyejekwes, this level of achievement is normal.
They’re Nigerian-American — it’s just what they do.
Today, 29 percent of Nigerian-Americans over the age of 25 hold
a graduate degree, compared to 11 percent of the overall U.S. population,
according to the Migrations Policy Institute. Among Nigerian-American
professionals, 45 percent work in education services, the 2016 American
Community Survey found, and many are professors at top universities. Nigerians
are entering the medical field in the U.S. at an increased rate, leaving their
home country to work in American hospitals, where they can earn more and work
in better facilities. A growing number of Nigerian-Americans are becoming
entrepreneurs and CEOs, building tech companies in the U.S. to help people back
home.
It hasn’t been easy — the racist stereotypes are far from
gone. Last year, President Donald Trump reportedly said in an Oval Office
discussion that Nigerians would never go back to “their huts” once they saw
America. But overt racism hasn’t stopped Nigerian-Americans from creating jobs,
treating patients, teaching students and contributing to local communities in
their new home, all while confidently emerging as one of the country’s most
succesful immigrant communities, with a median household income of $62,351,
compared to $57,617 nationally, as of 2015.
NIGERIAN-AMERICANS ARE BEGINNING TO MAKE A MARK IN SPORTS,
ENTERTAINMENT AND THE CULINARY ARTS.
“I think Nigerian-Americans offer a unique, flashy style and
flavor that people like,” says Chukwuemeka Onyejekwe, who goes by his rap name
Mekka Don. He points to Nigerian cuisine like jollof rice that’s gaining
popularity in the U.S. But more importantly, Mekka says, Nigerians bring a
“connectivity and understanding of Africa” to the U.S. “Many [Americans] get
their understanding of ’the motherland’ through our experiences and stories,”
he adds.
The Nigerian-American journey is still relatively new
compared with that of other major immigrant communities that grew in the U.S.
in the 20th century. The Nigerian-American population stood at 376,000 in 2015,
according to the Rockefeller Foundation–Aspen Institute. That was roughly the
strength of the Indian-American community back in 1980, before it emerged as a
leading light in fields ranging from economics to technology. But
Nigerian-Americans are already beginning to make a dent in the national
consciousness. In the case of forensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu, he’s
helping fix hits to the brain. The 49-year-old Omalu was the first to discover
and publish on chronic traumatic encephalopathy in American football players
(Will Smith played him in the 2015 film Concussion). ImeIme A. Umana, the first
Black woman elected president of the Harvard Law Review last year, is
Nigerian-American. In 2016, Nigerian-born Pearlena Igbokwe became president of
Universal Television, making her the first woman of African descent to head a
major U.S. TV studio. And the community has expanded rapidly, up from just
25,000 people in 1980.
Traditionally, education has been at the heart of the
community’s success. But success isn’t so easily defined within the culture
anymore. Nigerian-Americans are beginning to make a mark in sports,
entertainment and the culinary arts too — like Nigerian chef Tunde Wey in New
Orleans, who recently made headlines for using food to highlight racial wealth
inequality in America.
It was education that brought an early wave of Nigerians to
the U.S. in the 1970s. After the war against Biafra separatists in the ’60s,
the Nigerian government sponsored scholarships for students to pursue higher
education abroad. English-speaking Nigerian students excelled at universities
in the U.S. and U.K., often finding opportunities to continue their education
or begin their professional career in their host country. That emphasis on
education has since filtered through to their children’s generation.
Dr. Jacqueline Nwando Olayiwola was born in Columbus, Ohio,
to such Nigerian immigrant parents. Her mother is a retired engineer, now a
professor at Walden University; her father is a retired professor, now a
strategist at a consulting firm focused on governance in Africa. “Education was
always a major priority for my parents because it was their ticket out of
Nigeria,” Olayiwola says. Her parents used their network of academics to get
Olayiwola thinking about a career in medicine from a young age — by 11, she was
going to summits for minorities interested in health care. Olayiwola was
constantly busy as a kid doing homework and sports and participating in
National Honor Society and biomedical research programs, but it was the norm,
she says; her Nigerian roots meant it was expected of her.
Today, Olayiwola is a family physician, the chief clinical
transformation officer of RubiconMD, a leading health tech company, associate
clinical professor at University of California, San Francisco, instructor in
family medicine at Columbia University, and an author. Her new book, Papaya
Head, detailing her experience as a first-generation Nigerian-American, will be
published later this year. Olayiwola’s siblings are equally successful – her
older brother, Okey Onyejekwe, is also a physician, her younger brother, Mekka
Don, is a lawyer turned rapper, and her sister, Sylvia Ify Onyejekwe, Esq, is
the managing partner of her own New Jersey law firm.
But Olayiwola feels she needs to do more. She doesn’t want
America’s gain to be Nigeria’s permanent loss.
***
Olayiwola and her brother, Okey, stay active in the
Nigerian-American community. In 1998, they co-founded the Student Association
of Nigerian Physicians in the Americas, which organizes at least two medical
mission trips to Nigeria each year. Between 2000 and 2004, the siblings often
flew the nearly 8,000 miles to Nigeria to perform screenings for preventable
diseases. They took blood pressure, advised patients on diabetes and obesity
prevention, and provided prenatal counseling in rural areas.
“I feel a tremendous sense of wanting to go back [to
Nigeria] and help,” says Olayiwola.
It’s a sentiment shared by many in the Nigerian-American
community. But it’s easier said than done for some of America’s most qualified
professionals to leave world-class facilities and a comfortable life to return
permanently to a nation that, while Africa’s largest economy, remains mired in
political instability and corruption.
In the 1970s and ’80s, some foreign-educated Nigerian
graduates returned home, but found political and economic instability in a
postwar country. In 1966, the country’s military overthrew the regime of
independent Nigeria’s first prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. It was the
first of a series of military coups — again, later, in 1966, then in 1975,
1976, 1983, 1985 and 1993 — that were to deny the country even a semblance of
democracy until 1999.
“My parents were expected to study in the U.S. or U.K. and
then go back to Nigeria,” says Dr. Nnenna Kalu Makanjuola, who grew up in
Nigeria and now lives in Atlanta. Her parents did return, but with few jobs
available in the economic decline of the 1980s, many Nigerians did not. Within
a few years of their return, Makanjuola’s parents too decided it was best to
build their lives elsewhere.
Makanjuola, who has a pharmacy degree, works in public
health and is the founder and editor in chief of Radiant Health Magazine, came
to the U.S. when her father won a Diversity Immigrant Visa in 1995 — a program
Trump wants to dismantle. Makanjuola’s father moved the family to Texas so his
children could have access to better universities. Makanjuola intended to one
day pursue her career in Nigeria as her parents had, but it’s too hard to leave
the U.S., she says: “Many Nigerians intend to go back, but it’s impractical because
there’s more opportunity here.”
As an undergraduate student in Nigeria, Jacob Olupona, now a
professor of African religious traditions at Harvard Divinity School, was a
well-known activist in his community. He considered a career in politics, but a
mentor changed his mind. The mentor told Olupona: “Don’t go into politics
because you’re too honest and don’t join the military because you’re too
smart.” So Olupona headed to Boston University instead, to study the history of
religions — a subject he had always found fascinating as the son of a priest.
Like Olayiwola, the importance of education was instilled in him from a young
age but so too was the importance of spreading knowledge. “When you educate one
person, you educate the whole community,” Olupona says. That belief is what
translated into his career as a teacher.
Olupona stresses that Nigerians have also achieved a lot in
their country of origin. Moving to the U.S. isn’t the only route to success, he
says. Still, he believes the many academic opportunities in the U.S. have
benefited Nigerians. “There’s something about America and education that we
need to celebrate,” he says.
Marry those American opportunities with an upbringing that
emphasizes education, a drive to serve the U.S. while not forgetting their
roots, and a growing penchant for success, and you have a unique cocktail that
is the Nigerian-American community today.
Anyone from the Nigerian diaspora will tell you their
parents gave them three career choices: doctor, lawyer or engineer. For a
younger generation of Nigerian-Americans, that’s still true, but many are
adding a second career, or even a third, to that trajectory.
Anie Akpe works full time as vice president of mortgages at
Municipal Credit Union in New York City, but she’s also the founder of
Innov8tiv magazine, African Women in Technology (an education and mentorship
program) and an app called NetWorq that connects professionals. Raised in the
southern port city of Calabar, she had the Nigerian hustle baked into her
upbringing. “There was no such thing as ‘can’t’ in our household,” she says.
Akpe’s banking career fulfilled her parent’s expectations, but she wanted to do
more. Four and a half years ago, she launched Innov8tiv to highlight success
stories back home in Nigeria and throughout the African continent. Through her
magazine and through African Women in Technology, which offers networking
events, mentorship opportunities and internships, Akpe is helping propel women
into careers like hers. “Africa is male-dominated in most sectors,” she says.
“If I can show young women there are ways to do things within our culture that
allow them to grow, then I’ve been successful.”
***
Like Akpe, rapper Mekka Don took a traditional career route
at first. He got a law degree from New York University and worked at a top-10
law firm, but he had always wanted to pursue music. At 25, Mekka, who is the
younger brother of Jacqueline Olayiwola, and Sylvia and Okey Onyejekwe, decided
to take the plunge.
Fellow attorneys ridiculed him, asking incredulously: “Who
leaves a law career to become a rapper?” But his family was understanding —
part of a shift in attitudes that Mekka says he increasingly sees in his
parents’ generation of Nigerian-Americans. “My parents see how lucrative music
can be,” he says, adding, “They also get excited when they see me on TV.”
The lawyer turned rapper has been featured on MTV and VH1,
has a licensing agreement with ESPN to play his music during college football
broadcasts and just released a new single, “Nip and Tuck.” He still has that
law degree to fall back on and it comes in handy in his current career too. “I
never need anyone to read contracts for me, so I save a ton on lawyer fees,”
Mekka says.
The community’s drive to succeed sounds exhausting at times,
particularly if you never feel you’ve reached the finish line. Omalu, the
forensic pathologist, was recently in the news again after his independent
autopsy of Sacramento youth Stephon Clark showed that the 22-year-old was
repeatedly shot in the back by police officers, which conflicted with the
Sacramento Police report.
But if you ask Omalu about his success, he’s quick to
correct. “I’m not successful,” Omalu says, adding that he won’t consider himself
so until he can “wake up one day, do absolutely nothing and there will be no
consequences.” Part of Omalu’s humility is faith-based: “I was given a talent
to serve,” he says. Omalu has eight degrees, has made life-changing medical
discoveries and has been portrayed by a famous actor on screen, but he doesn’t
revel in his accomplishments.
And what about Nigerians who come to the U.S. and don’t
succeed? Wey, the activist chef, says there’s a lot of pressure to fit a
certain mold when you’re Nigerian. Choosing the right career is only one part
of that. “You have to be heterosexual, you have to have children, you have to
have all of those degrees,” he says of the cultural expectations he was raised
with. “It limits the possibilities of what Nigerians can be.”
While others agree it can be stressful at times, they say
the high career bar isn’t a burden to them. “I don’t know anything else,” says
Olayiwola about being raised to value education and success. Akpe feels the
same. “You’re not thinking it’s hard, it’s just something you do,” she says.
Now that doctor, lawyer and engineer are no longer the only
acceptable career options within the community, the path to professional
achievement is rife with more possibilities than ever before. Sports, entertainment,
music, the culinary arts — there are few fields Nigerian-Americans aren’t
already influencing. And the negative stereotypes? Hold onto them at your own
peril.
SOURCE: OZY
