Farooq Kperogi

Several Nigerian websites, including the online version of the traditional New Telegraph newspaper, quoted a putative ‘US study’ to have averred that Igbos are the “most brilliant black Africa [sic] race.”

As you would expect, this has animated a frenzied debate in Nigerian cyberspace.
But let’s get the facts straight. The article from where the notion of Igbo IQ superiority is extrapolated isn’t a study, nor is it American.

It is a reflective essay by a Zambian man called Chanda Chisala. The essay, titled “The IQ Gap Is No Longer a Black and White Issue,” was first published on June 25, 2015 in “The Unz Review: An Alternative Media Selection,” an American-based website that bills itself as “A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media.”


“The Unz Review: An Alternative Media Selection” isn’t an academic journal, nor are essays published in it considered scholarly. Although the essay that caused Nigerian websites to claim that Igbos have been crowned as the most intellectually endowed African race is a synthesis of scholarly and popular articles, it is itself not a systematic scholarly study. It is merely one writer’s perspective.

The author of the essay, Chanda Chisala, isn’t an American; he is a Zambian born in the Zambian town of Chingola. He studied Biochemistry at the University of Zambia and graduated in 1997. He is known in Zambia as an intrepid Internet entrepreneur who founded Zambia Online, Zambia’s leading Internet portal. He later relocated to the United States where he has held fellowships at Stanford University, the Hoover Institution, and the National Endowment for Democracy.

So headlines attributing Igbos’ unparalleled brilliance to a “US academic study” are factually inaccurate.

In the essay, Chisala merely sought to disprove the notion that whites are innately more intelligent than blacks. As most people know, IQ tests in the US consistently show native-born American blacks underperforming their white counterparts, leading some to conclude that racial difference, not income or environment; is the most important causative factor for white intellectual superiority and black intellectual inferiority in IQ tests.

Over the last few years, with the increasing migration of black people to the United States from the Caribbean Islands and Africa, many settled certainties about racial disparities in IQ tests are being exploded. African immigrants in the US are high academic achievers. In some cases, they outperform white Americans. For instance, Nigerians are the single most educated demographic group in the United States, although it must be admitted that Nigerians in the United States are both too numerically insignificant (we are a mere 228,000) and too self-selected to be representative of the general population at home.

Before Africans began migrating to the United States in fairly large numbers since the 1970s, Caribbean immigrants had excelled, and still excel, in academic pursuits in ways that disrupt notions of racial hierarchy in cognitive endowment.
So Chisala’s basic argument is that if race is the only explanatory framework invoked to account for the IQ gap between white Americans and native-born American blacks, then native-born American blacks should be smarter than recent African and Caribbean immigrants since native-born American blacks have more white genes in them than both Caribbean and African immigrants.

He also dismissed a controversial 2009 Harvard IQ study that found black African immigrants in the United States to have an average IQ of 89. “They lump together black Africans into one homogenous group when there are different kinds of black Africans, including a good number coming in as refugees from highly troubled countries, while other nationalities consist of the most educated ethnicities in America. [T]he different groups of African immigrants can have very large background differences that reflect in cognitive gaps among them that are even higher than the gap between American blacks and whites…In other words, the mean IQ of African immigrants may be as unrepresentative of black Igbo immigrants as it is of white South African immigrants. It’s a meaningless mean,” he said.

The putative average IQ of 89 among African immigrants (it is 83 among black Caribbean immigrants) is lower than the average IQ of native-born American blacks, yet African and Caribbean immigrants, on average, outperform American blacks in academic pursuits and rival, in some cases outrival, whites. Chisala argues, therefore, that the IQ tests aren’t representative of all Africans. “As the UK data below shows, it is very unlikely that children of immigrants from the Igbo or Yoruba groups of Nigeria or the Ashanti group of Ghana, for example, have an average IQ below the white mean IQ,” he wrote.

The data he presented to make his case uses Igbo academic achievement in the US and the UK, and that was the basis for the notion that a “US academic study” has pronounced Igbos as the most “brilliant African race.”

The article “resurrected” from last year because an Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna, a Nigerian-American high school graduate born of Igbo parents, was recently accepted by all eight Ivy League schools in the United States. Last year, Harold Ekeh, another Nigerian-American born of Igbo parents, was also accepted by all Ivy League schools.

However, although Nigerian websites, including the New Telegraph, claim that these brilliant young Nigerian-Americans “have broken a record of being accepted by eight Ivy League schools,” it is actually not true. Every year, a few smart teenagers get accepted to all eight Ivy League schools. In 2014, for instance, a Ghanaian-American teenager by the name of Kwasi Enin was accepted in all 8 Ivy League schools. In 2015, a high school student by the name of Ronald Nelson was accepted by all the Ivy League schools, but he rejected every single one of them and instead went to a state school.

This is in no way intended to diminish the praiseworthy achievements of the two brilliant Nigerian Americans. Nor do I want to be understood as denying that Igbos, on average, have a higher intellectual drive than the rest of us. (In my high school in Nigeria we often jokingly questioned the Igboness of any Igbo person who wasn’t among the top three in his class).

Nevertheless, no systematic scholarly study anywhere, and certainly not in the US, has proved that Igbos are the most brilliant people in Africa. That study may yet come, but Chanda Chisala’s opinion article is not it.

If Igbos are not....then who is?

Definitely not those people

Of course they are, we don't need any confirmation from US

now they are crying hahahahaha

who cares what Farooq thinks? He's the same guy supporting APC, but lives in the USA.

Give me a break

This Tinubu guy

Why is it that matters concerning Igbos are like a tsetse fly on the scrotum of many Igbophobes in this country?.
I can't even begin to imagine the discomfort.Lol!!

No Igbos, No Nigeria. Igbos are everything

Lol... It's hard to admit but Inferiority complex is really dealing with most Nigerians against Igbos. You might disagree with the study on the grounds of ethnicism but it was actually carried out.
Kiss the truth Mr Farooq.

I know there is no study saying in "Nigeria" but in "Africa". They are the smartest and most intelligent in Africa. The mistake was "in Nigeria" instead of "in Africa"

https://www.africanevents.com/the-most-brilliant-black-african-race-facts-and-figures-from-the-us-academic-report/

There is no "American study "


But there is an independent study?

So because it's done by a Zambian who lives in the America makes its less important?

I personally don't believe igbos are the smartest people in Africa... But I believe the igbos are one of the smartest ethnic nations on earth for sure


Maybe their large number plays a roll too


From being among the least educated ethnic nations in Nigeria

To contribute close to 30% of graduates in Nigeria with 5 states out of 37 that's even outside igbos in Benue, Kogi, cross river, rivers, Edo and Delta


All in less than 100 years is a remarkable feat sha

Take Igbo seriously at your own peril



Everything about them is to measure diiick


Drug trafficking people

Nothing but the truth

Joblessness. So because of that you are now writing epistles but deafen when there is no light,electricity etc

OGA please let them continue deluding themselves. their delusion,our wins!!!

Toh

Only if Farooq matter won't eventually end us like Reno's own.

Rikishi pawon po....

aylive02:
This Tinubu guy

Chai.

Una no even dey interested in accepting the fact. So Farooq na Tinubu supporter today..

Tochitee:
OGA please let them continue deluding themselves. their delusion,our wins!!!

but we Yorubas are the ones having sleepless nights over mere academic report in US and not the Ibos. So I advise us to stop wallowing in inferiority complex and face our lives.

Armaggedon:
Lol... It's hard to admit but Inferiority complex is really dealing with most Nigerians against Igbos. You might disagree with the study on the grounds of ethnicism but it was actually carried out.
Kiss the truth Mr Farooq.

If this would help and console Igbo to stop crying about marginalization then I pray a mob should push this to front page

You na done hear ? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

helinues:


Chai.

Una no even dey interested in accepting the fact. So Farooq na Tinubu supporter today..

does any of the incoherent bullshit he wrote up there look like fact?

He said there was no such report but proceeded to analyse "the report"

Farouk Kperogi should tell us who the smartest tribe is then. Foolish idiots looking for political appointment by attacking Igbo people.

Ndi ara

make you igbos keep makin noise....let other africans notice una....

when they start abusin una,dont come to us nigerians complainin about xenophobia....
we nigerians no send una....

stvpid tribe causin trouble everywhere they go....

Bulldozer90:
does any of the incoherent bullshit he wrote up there look like fact?

He said there was no such report but proceeded to analyse "the report"

There is no USA study. Read and comprehend.

There might be some studies about it but not by USA

We know their antics now. Ibo people must chestbeat all the time. It's oxygen to them 🤣

Beremx:
Farouk Kperogi should tell us who the smartest tribe is then. Foolish idiots looking for political appointment by attacking Igbo people.

Ndi ara

This one is in severe pains. The most barbaric tribe? Yes.

Ola9ja23:


If this would help and console Igbo to stop crying about marginalization then I pray a mob should push this to front page

You na done hear ? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

🤣🤣🤣. I hope it stops them from fleeing their region to the SW in their thousands on a daily basis.

Ola9ja23:


If this would help and console Igbo to stop crying about marginalization then I pray a mob should push this to front page

You na done hear ? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

what exactly?

Goodvibes007:

This one is in severe pains. The most barbaric tribe? Yes.

you want me to tow your path in ethnic bigotry? Abi I should mention to you which ethnic group harvest skull and other organs in the body?
Be careful

GREAT TRIBE
GREAT PEOPLE
GREAT NATION


Even the white man knows ,who is Boss..

Lols..... 'Awa ppl' and chest beating!


Farogi, they will come for ur head now.
You don buy markate!!!

Ola9ja23:
Take Igbo seriously at your own peril



Everything about them is to measure diiick


Drug trafficking people

They will soon catch you with skull.

Yoruba are insecure people.