Nigerian social clubs, cultural organizations, and town unions meet every weekend in dozens of U.S. cities, including Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, and others. At these meetings, there is food (jollof rice), cloth (aso ebi), and joyous laughter, along with inevitable levies for funerals, weddings, or other projects back in Nigeria. These organizations — People’s Club of Nigeria International, Umuada Igbo, Ndi-Ichie Cultural Association, Omo Oduduwa, Zumunta Association, and hundreds of town unions formed around villages and local government areas — represent perhaps one of the least tapped resources for development in the Nigerian diaspora. They cover three of Nigeria’s four major ethnic groups (the fourth being Edo), and because they do so in concert with one another, they provide a model that could work across all ethnic and geographical regions of Nigeria.
While there is certainly a good instinct behind why these organizations were formed — mutual aid, cultural preservation, etc. — there has generally been limited movement beyond social gatherings and ceremonies. In my view, these organizations need to develop into what I refer to as “agents of agentic development,” i.e., organizations that are not simply passive conduits for remittances and nostalgia but active mechanisms for creating sustainable and measurable change in Nigeria and in the communities where their members currently reside in the United States.
As someone who has spent time sitting in those folding chairs after everyone else has left the hall for the day, calculating levies and debating budgets, I am writing from a place of familiarity. I have previously served as president of The Ndi-Ichie Cultural Association. And over the years, we transformed our annual masquerade festival into the Igbo Fest Festival and initiated the Igbo culture, language & communication conference — an evening event preceding the festival where elder and younger members sit side-by-side, discussing issues related to maintaining a language and a worldview thousands of miles away from Nnewi, Nsukka, or Owerri. Additionally, I currently serve as chairman of the Sugar Land chapter of People’s Club International, where discussions focus on converting dues paid by its membership of doctors, engineers, lawyers, accountants, and entrepreneurs into a lasting legacy. Ultimately, through both experiences, I learned the same thing: the biggest hurdle is not hosting the party but encouraging a group of generous yet very busy individuals to see it as a platform.
Examples of agentic development
Agentic development involves an organization identifying a problem, designing a project with clear outcomes, establishing accountability, and tracking results. The methodology is identical to that used by nonprofits and successful companies. Agentic development represents the difference between “we sent money to install a borehole” and “we designed, constructed, tested, and continue to operate three community water systems that provide clean drinking water for approximately 4,000 people, with the ability for a rotating village committee to report on water usage twice per year.”
There are several examples of tangible programs that town unions and social clubs are uniquely situated to implement:
- Adopt-a-School programs. Rather than making a one-time donation of textbooks or uniforms to a school in your ancestral town, a town union can adopt a specific elementary or secondary school for multi-year support: paying teachers’ salaries, providing science lab equipment, funding internet access, and sponsoring an annual scholarship contest. While members in the U.S. cannot physically mentor students while teaching abroad, they can use virtual mentoring opportunities to create a connection between their two worlds.
- Medical missions with skills transfer. Many Nigerian-American physicians, nurses, and pharmacists travel back to Nigeria regularly. Organizations with strong networks of professional women, such as Umuada Igbo, can formalize this process into an annual medical outreach program to local hospitals and educate community health workers on sustaining healthcare services between physician visits.
- Micro-lending funds for small-business cooperatives. Town unions can allocate a portion of their annual dues to cooperative revolving loan funds for small businesses in Nigeria — tailors, farmers, market vendors — administered by a village-based committee responsible for documenting repayment schedules.
- Fintech platforms are creating remittance-to-investment pipelines. Since significant amounts of diaspora money already flow informally into Nigeria each month, organizations can partner with fintech companies to help members channel remittances into structured investments (land banks, agricultural co-ops, equity stakes in local infrastructure projects) rather than individual purchases.
- Chapters of civic engagement here in the United States. Agentic development is not solely applicable to Nigeria. Organizations such as People’s Club International can sponsor voter registration campaigns, startup business incubators, and youth mentorship programs for second-generation Nigerian Americans in cities like Houston, empowering members politically and economically where they live.
- Cultural-language preservation programs. Ndi-ichie Cultural Association, Omo Oduduwa, and Zumunta can each fund language classes for Nigerian American children born in the diaspora in Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa, respectively, as well as document oral histories of elder Nigerians before their knowledge of their ancestors is lost.
- Emergency response funds for disasters and crises. Instead of collecting money sporadically when flooding or insecurity occurs in a member community back home, organizations can collect funds consistently throughout the year and distribute them immediately upon receiving a disaster notification.
Organizing principle
This does not require eliminating the social events and celebrations that give these organizations meaning for their members. It requires adding a development agenda to an existing organizational structure—an ongoing planning committee, a defined budget allocation, and an annual performance review sheet presented at general membership meetings. Houston alone hosts an extraordinary collection of Nigerian professional expertise and organizational capacity — from Igbofest to the Ndi-Ichie Council — as well as a thriving network of Yoruba and Hausa associations. If even a few dozen organizations representing these ethnic and regional groups — Igbo, Yoruba/Hausa/Fulani, etc. — developed one agentic initiative each and tracked its success seriously, the total impact would be immense in Nigerian towns and American neighborhoods.
I often reflect on that Symposium stage the night before Igbofest Houston — the year an elderly speaker shifted mid-sentence from English to Igbo, prompting nearly half of the young adults in attendance to reach for translations provided by their parents. That moment was not a failure — it was an honest start. Similarly, I believe that is the same starting point for a Zumunta chapter meeting in Minnesota or an Omo Oduduwa dinner meeting in Atlanta: meeting halls filled with individuals who cherish their homeland but have not yet been formally or regularly asked to transform that affection into an identifiable project with measurable objectives and a timeline.
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♦ Chris Ulasi is on the Editorial Board of The West African Pilot News. He contributes stories about culture and tradition, elite politics, ethnicity and national integration, civil society, and social movement. He is a university professor, community builder, poet, film producer, recording the emergent Nollywood cultural history through film.
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