Member-only story
My Nigerian American Heritage
I am Nigerian American from the beautiful city of Washington D.C, United States and the great state of Enugu in Nigeria. I feel blessed to call both great countries my home.
I grew up in Washington D.C and learned a lot about the government and how it worked. In school we wrote long essays about our leaders and even wrote letters to the elected officials in government. I remember writing to Mr. Andrew Young who was a Democrat congressman at the time but was later appointed the United States Ambassador to the United Nations by President Jimmy Carter. He replied my letter and I thought that was pretty cool! I absolutely loved it! Who knows maybe I’ll meet him one day and tell him.
In the late seventies we traveled to Nigeria and it was totally and utterly different to anything I had ever experienced. I found that Nigeria was (and still is) a beautiful country with abundant natural resources especially in petroleum and natural gas. Back then Nigeria was a country that had 19 states and the population was roughly around 80 million people. Today Nigeria has 36 states with a population of over 209 million people making it the most populous country in Africa.
There are over 250 ethnic groups in Nigeria. The official language of Nigeria is English but there are over 500 languages spoken there including Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Itsekiri, Edo, Ijaw, Etsako, Esan, Jukun, Kanuri, Tiv, Oron, Ibibio, Etsako, Gokana, Urhobo, Margi, Nupe, Ogoni, Igede, Ngas, Egede, Obolo and Gwaru. The three largest ethnic groups in Nigeria are Igbo (my tribe) in the east, Yoruba in the west, Hausa in the north. These three ethnic groups comprise over 60% of the total population.
I found Nigeria to be a very religious country and that it has the fifth largest Muslim population in the world and the sixth largest Christian population in the world. In terms of religion, Nigeria is divided roughly in half with 53.5% Muslims living mostly in the north and 45.9% Christians living mostly in the south. A small percentage (0.6%) practice traditional religion. Definitely very interesting.
