Are there any Black Americans who have taken residence in Nigeria either as a result of marriage or as a result of voluntary geographic displacement? That’s a persistent question that many of my African-American students and friends have asked me.

When a student first asked me this question 2005, I knew of only one Black American woman who called Nigeria home. By 2006, I learned of another Black American man who married a Nigerian woman and lived with her in Benin City for many years. And just late last year, I learned of a fascinating Black American woman who has lived in New Bussa (which used to be my local government headquarters until it was ceded to Niger State in 1992) for nearly 40 years. So who are they?

The first “Black-American Nigerian” I know or heard of is Mrs. Dianne Oputa, the charming and vivacious wife of maverick Nigerian music star Charles “Charlie Boy” Oputa. She has been married to her husband for over 30 years. The first time I heard her speak on Nigerian national television in the early 1990s, I had not the dimmest clue that she was American; she’d lost all her American accent.

Then in 2006 I subscribed to a Nigerian-centered Internet discussion group where I encountered a Black American man by the name of Larry Ukali Johnson-Redd who said he’d had cause to relocate to Nigeria for many years after getting married to a Nigerian lady. While in Nigeria, he taught government at Eghosa Grammar School in Benin City, the Edo State capital. Unfortunately, his wife took ill and died. So he returned to the United States, but he still periodically visits Nigeria.

I don’t know if Mr. Johnson-Redd has a Nigerian citizenship, but my understanding is that the Nigerian constitution grants him citizenship on account of his marriage to a Nigerian.

The most recent “Black-American Nigerian” I discovered is a certain enamoring woman called Mrs. Cecilia Crump Erinne who has been living in Nigeria for nearly 40 years. She is married to a Nigerian engineer by the name of Mr. Edwin Erinne with whom she has six children, one whom is a Ph.D. student at Kennesaw State University where I am an Assistant Professor.

Unlike the two “Black-American Nigerians” I mentioned earlier, Mrs. Erinne, originally from the Southern U.S. state of Mississippi, lived in rural Nigeria for most of the time she has lived in Nigeria. It must take exceptional love and dedication to make the transition from America to rural Nigeria. (She now lives in Enugu with her husband after retiring from the Niger State Ministry of Education.)

When I got a chance to speak with her here in America in December last year, she sounded nothing like an American. Her accent and mannerisms were decidedly Nigerian. It turned out that she was a colleague of my dad’s immediate younger, the late J.B. Kperogi, at Borgu Secondary School, one of the oldest and most prestigious secondary schools in my part of Nigeria.

My uncle taught English for many years at the school and was the school’s Vice Principal before he retired to join partisan politics in the late 1970s.
Mrs. Erinne taught math and science to generations of Nigerians at the same school and became the school’s principal before she retired in the early 2000s. I had a surreal sensation when I discovered that this delightful “Black-American Nigerian” knew a member of my family.

There are certainly more Black-American Nigerians than the three I’ve mentioned here. But they can’t be that many. There are more Black Americans in other West African countries than there are in Nigeria. When I lived in Louisiana, for instance, I met many Black Americans who had homes in Ghana, the Gambia, Senegal, and Benin Republic. They visited their adopted families in these countries during summers. By contrast, the only Black Americans I know or heard of came to our country by way of marriage.

This is strange. By several accounts, the African ancestral roots of more than 40 percent of American Blacks are traceable to what is now Nigeria. You would expect that the search for “authenticity” and ancestral rootedness, which has historically been a big deal in middle-class Black America, would attract them to Nigeria.

After all, between the late 1950s and the early 1960s, scores of Black Americans immigrated to Ghana both in a symbolic search for identity and in solidarity with Ghana’s independence from British colonialism in 1957. In fact, celebrated Black American scholar WEB Dubois renounced his American citizenship and died a Ghanaian in 1963.

So why do American Blacks shun Nigeria? There are at least two reasons for this. First, “Slave trade tourism,” which draws large swaths of Black Americans to Ghana, the Gambia, Senegal and Benin Republic, is almost absent in Nigeria. This is a shame because Nigeria has more historic claims to the ancestral provenance of African Americans than the countries that have been cashing in on “slave trade tourism.”

Blame this on Nigeria’s backward and shortsighted leadership since independence.

Second, Nigeria’s emergent postcolonial leaders were so beholden to the power structure in Washington that they deliberately avoided any associations with Black-American leaders in the 1960s. For instance, at the instance of the American government, the Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa shunned Malcolm X when he visited Nigeria in the early 1960s; the Ghanaian government, on the other hand, gave him a red-carpet reception.

Again this is a shame because Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first ceremonial president, was one of the first Africans, if not the first African, to be educated at a Historically Black College and University in America. Azikiwe graduated from Lincoln University, an all-black university in Pennsylvania, in 1930. In fact, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, an icon of pan-Africanism, wrote in his autobiography that it was Azikiwe that inspired—and recommended— him to study at Lincoln University.

A measure of the regard Azikiwe had in Black America was evident in the fact that WEB Dubois personally attended Azikiwe’s inauguration as Nigeria’s first Governor-General in 1960.

But because Ghana had a more progressive and independent-minded leadership, it was to it that many African Americans migrated in the 1960s. Successive Ghanaian governments consciously court and cultivate the friendship of our kith across the Atlantic. Not so in Nigeria.

In 2003, I met the younger brother of Alex Haley (the famous author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and coauthor of The Autobiography of Malcolm X) who became America’s ambassador to the Gambia. He told me the frustration he had when he tried to persuade Olusegun Obasanjo, then Nigeria's military Head of State, to grant dual citizenship to African Americans in the late 1970s in order to foster a greater bond between Nigeria and Black America. He said instead of giving a thought to his suggestions, Obasanjo peremptorily granted him an honorary Nigerian citizenship and shot down any further discussion on the issue.

This made me sad.

One of the names Malcolm X cherished intensely till his death was the name he was given by students of the University of Ibadan when he visited Nigeria in May 1964. The name was “Omowale,” Yoruba for “the child has returned home.” When will Nigeria officially open its doors and welcome home its estranged children in the Western diaspora?

Source: farooqaperogi.com

Photos:

No. 1 - Charles "Charlie Boy" Oputa and his wife of 33 years and counting
No. 2 - Mr. Larry Ukali Johnson-Redd in Nigeria
No. 3 - Mrs. Cecilia Crump-Erinne
No. 4 - Malcolm X in Africa

There are many black american here in Nigeria joo

I believe there are more in Ghana

http://thegrio.com/2013/11/02/why-ghana-is-fast-becoming-a-hub-for-african-americans/

You forgot to mention the wife of Orlando Julius. Dan Foster is also an African American. But like someone said, they seem to be more in Ghana than Nigeria.

Nice thread

I know one of them. She's the principal and owner of one of the best secondary schools in Nigeria - Dority International Secondary school, Aba Nigeria. She's a black american married to an Igbo man. Her school is the only center in the east for SAT, GRE and TOEFL exams. She lives in Aba where she runs her school efficiently.

Haven't seen one.

zboyd:
But because Ghana had a more progressive and independent-minded leadership, it was to it that many African Americans migrated in the 1960s. Successive Ghanaian governments consciously court and cultivate the friendship of our kith across the Atlantic. Not so in Nigeria.
In 2003, I met the younger brother of Alex Haley (the famous author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and coauthor of The Autobiography of Malcolm X) who became America’s ambassador to the Gambia. He told me the frustration he had when he tried to persuade Olusegun Obasanjo, then Nigeria's military Head of State, to grant dual citizenship to African Americans in the late 1970s in order to foster a greater bond between Nigeria and Black America. He said instead of giving a thought to his suggestions, Obasanjo peremptorily granted him an honorary Nigerian citizenship and shot down any further discussion on the issue.
This made me sad.
One of the names Malcolm X cherished intensely till his death was the name he was given by students of the University of Ibadan when he visited Nigeria in May 1964. The name was “Omowale,” Yoruba for “the child has returned home.” When will Nigeria officially open its doors and welcome home its estranged children in the Western diaspora?

There are black americans in Nigeria but their population is very very small or are not many at all. Most Black americans that go to Africa they are mostly in Ghana, Liberia, South Africa, Gambia, Senegal for the most part because those governments have done programs meant to bring African americans to their countries and I am not surprised especially with countries like South Africa, Liberia and Ghana is doing it due to their history and philosophy but to the Nigerian government I don't think they have issues with african american coming but it is not important for them or a priority for them at the sametime, so I am not surprised about this. At the sametime I don't think we should put down the nigerian government down for this cause even though there are not that many african americans in Nigeria their are many Brazilians that emigrated to Nigeria, after slavery was stopped in Brazil, and Nigerians welcomed them and they made their mark in Nigeria and assimilated with Nigerians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilians_in_Nigeria

igbo2011: I believe there are more in Ghana

http://thegrio.com/2013/11/02/why-ghana-is-fast-becoming-a-hub-for-african-americans/

Its true, Besides South Africa, Ghana has the largest Black american population

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jFviE37E2Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVlvt8OwgB0

anonymous6:

Its true, Besides South Africa, Ghana has the largest Black american population

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jFviE37E2Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVlvt8OwgB0

some people refer to ghana as Africa for starters.. This is because we have been able to preserve our unique. Culture, and are accommodating all covered up by the spirit of pan. Africansim. But there still a lot to do. .

anonymous6:

There are black americans in Nigeria but their population is very very small or are not many at all. Most Black americans that go to Africa they are mostly in Ghana, Liberia, South Africa, Gambia, Senegal for the most part because those governments have done programs meant to bring African americans to their countries and I am not surprised especially with countries like South Africa, Liberia and Ghana is doing it due to their history and philosophy but to the Nigerian government I don't think they have issues with african american coming but it is not important for them or a priority for them at the sametime, so I am not surprised about this. At the sametime I don't think we should put down the nigerian government down for this cause even though there are not that many african americans in Nigeria their are many Brazilians that emigrated to Nigeria, after slavery was stopped in Brazil, and Nigerians welcomed them and they made their mark in Nigeria and assimilated with Nigerians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilians_in_Nigeria

one word. “UNITY” is present among black people..am even Worried about ghana cos if we were where we r supposed to b by Now there will be a huge black exodus world wide coming back home..where the land will be Green For Them

iamord: some people refer to ghana as Africa for starters.. This is because we have been able to preserve our unique. Culture, and are accommodating all covered up by the spirit of pan. Africansim. But there still a lot to do. .

I didn't know Ghana was called that but I am not surprised, Pan Africanism is strong with Ghanians more then Nigeria. Nothing wrong with either though

iamord: one word. “UNITY” is present among black people..am even Worried about ghana cos if we were where we r supposed to b by Now there will be a huge black exodus world wide coming back home..where the land will be Green For Them

That's a issue Ghana would have to think about in the long run which would be in Ghana's disadvantage when it comes to resources and Land.

anonymous6:

I didn't know Ghana was called that but I am not surprised, Pan Africanism is strong with Ghanians more then Nigeria. Nothing wrong with either though

well the spirit needs to be strengthened.. This present generation is loosing it.. Those that had zeal for african unity seem to Be in the Grave

iamord: well the spirit needs to be strengthened.. This present generation is loosing it.. Those that had zeal for african unity seem to Be in the Grave

I think African unity will grow back again when African countries start to grow stronger economically and start to buy and sell from each other for progression in general for the African continent. I think some Ghanians have more zeal for it in other areas besides econimics, but in order for that attitude to continue they need to see some signs that it's worth it and there is change. I think African unity economically is inevitable("not united states of Africa"; where african countries are turned into states), the question is when?

anonymous6:

I think African unity will grow back again when African countries start to grow stronger economically and start to buy and sell from each other for progression in general for the African continent. I think some Ghanians have more zeal for it in other areas besides econimics, but in order for that attitude to continue they need to see some signs that it's worth it and there is change. I think African unity economically is inevitable("not united states of Africa"; where african countries are turned into states), the question is when?

u r right..well the question is when.. A sign that the time is coming will be when tribalism reduces on nairaland. Lol.. I do hope we wake up fast tho