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Hamilton Odunze
President Donald J. Trump does not really need to pick on Nigerians. Last week, he said that “Nigerians come to the United States on visiting visas and refuse to go back to their caves in Nigeria”. But Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, denied that the President actually made such comments.
There’s a Nigerian maxim that my father says to me when I ignore people who disparage me or my heritage, and it goes thus: If you respond to a knock on your door and say there is nobody home, you are a coward indeed. Trump knocked on our door as Nigerians, and we must respond civilly, but not as cowards.
Assuming that Sarah Sanders is right and that the President did not make such coldhearted comments about Nigerians, let him then consider this response as a preemptive reminder that Nigerians are some of the most peace-loving, hard-working, and law-abiding minority groups in the United States. However, considering that the President has in the past made very derogatory remarks about other minority groups in the United States, whether it is calling for a total ban of Muslims coming into the United States or saying that he has great relationship with the blacks, I would not put it past him to say similar things about Nigerians. Either way, someone needs to respond on behalf of more than one million Nigerians who call the United States their home.
I’m not sure that the President comprehends numbers very well, but on this occasion, the best way to respond or preempt him is to throw some numbers at him. Trump cannot truly understand these numbers while still making derogatory statements against Nigerians.
According to The Rockefeller Foundation Aspen Institute Diaspora Program (RAD), Nigerians are the best educated of 15 groups of immigrants in the United States. It’s also true that a greater number of first- and second- generation Nigerians earned undergraduate degrees by 37% compared to 27% percent of the general United States population. According to the same report, a household headed by Nigerians has a slightly higher median income than that of the general United States population. Nigerians are not just picking up the jobs that Americans refuse to do—rather, we are also competing very well in corporate America.
Just a few months ago, at Howard University, sixteen Nigerian students were awarded special honors by the university. Additionally, forty-three of the ninety-six graduating Doctor of Pharmacy candidates were Nigerian-Americans. Considering that Howard University is only a mere 1.9 miles from the White House, one would think that President Trump would be aware of these facts.
Back in April, Ifeoma White-Thorpe—a student with Nigerian parents—was accepted by all eight of the Ivy League colleges. And she is not alone. Chiamaka Obilor, another student raised by two Nigerian parents, was also accepted by all of the Ivy League colleges. There are a good number of Nigerian physicians in the United States who have graduated from Ivy League colleges. I know this because my own sister graduated from one of them as a plastic surgeon. The President himself, even with all of his money and influence, cannot boast of having a child who graduated from an Ivy League college. Talk about an embarrassment of wealth and influence. In Nigerian parlance, we always say that “money misses road,” when people who did not work hard have more money than they know what to do with it. President Trump can easily be classified as such.
The point I’m trying to make is that Nigerians are people who play by the rules and work hard, but above all, we place a strong emphasis on raising our children with strong family values and a great respect for law and order. The truth is that Nigerians are not easily knocked down by false claims and asinine comments. But when such comments are made by a man who both publicly mocked a disabled journalist and openly bragged about groping women and walking in on unsuspecting young girls while in a changing room at a beauty pageant and who were just looking to get ahead in life, it becomes deeply insulting to our values. And someone needs to speak up.