History of Nigerian Americans in Dallas–Fort Worth
The Dallas–Fort Worth area has one of the largest Nigerian American populations in the United States. History Many Nigerians of Igbo origin began leaving Nigeria after the Biafra war of 1967–1970. After that, Dallas began to receive many persons of Nigerian origin, and by the 1980s the Nigerian community in Dallas formed. Demographics As of 2000, within the counties of Dallas, Denton, Collin, and Tarrant, there were 7,300 persons who were born in Nigeria, making up about 1% of the total foreign-born population of these four counties. As of 2005 most of the Nigerian immigrants come from southern Nigeria. As of 2014 the numbers of Igbo Nigerian Americans in the Dallas–Fort Worth area were in the ten thousands. Several Nigerian community leaders in the DFW area stated that there were up to 50,000 Igbos in the region. In 2005 Dennis D. Cordell and Manuel Garcia y Griego, authors of "The Integration of Nigerian and Mexican Immigrants in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas," wrote that "virtually all Nigerians arriving in the DFW, even the most recent cohort in 2000-2004, came with high levels of spoken English." This is due to the fact that most Nigerians coming to DFW historically came from the upper