After twenty years in exile, I returned to my native Nigeria, with my son Omar James and his mother, Afaf. In the old days, just like today, conflict between Christian and Muslim were at the forefront of national politics. It needn't be this way. I was born into a Christian family, and I firmly believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and the Gospel. While living in New York City, I attended NYU, where I met a gentleman named Bilal Winston, from the Nation of Islam. Bilal became my friend, and introduced me to the ways of Islam.
Bilal and I had many talks about the role of the black man in contemporary western society, and I found myself agreeing with him on many levels. Thanks to his teachings, I became a proud member of N.O.I. and firmly embraced my newfound identity as an African-American Muslim man. Thanks to them, I found a clarity of purpose that was previously lacking in my life. I also found peace and, quite unexpectedly, love. My name is Aziz Kendrick Abachu, and this is my story.
I was born on January 31, 1978. The son of Phillip Abachu and his darling wife Michelle O'Connor-Abachu. I first saw the light of day in the City of Makurdi, in the Benue State of Nigeria. I come from a fairly interesting background, I'd like to think. My father moved to the City of London, England, to study at Oxford University. He returned to Nigeria with his white British wife, Michelle O'Connor, whom he met at school, and got himself a high-paying job with the Nigerian government. Unfortunately, due to political instability, my parents were forced to leave Nigeria six years after I was born.
Since my father didn't have British citizenship, my parents ended up moving to the United States. A Nigerian man and his white British wife settling in Brooklyn as an immigrant couple with their son in tow, yes, you read that right. I became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. and embraced American life with everything it had to offer. My family did alright for itself, I guess. My dad worked for the IRS and my mom worked for a powerful NYC think tank.
For intellectuals like them, a change of scenery wasn't much of a challenge. British university degrees are valid in the United States of America, thank God. Yeah, we were doing alright for ourselves. We moved out of Brooklyn and into a four-bedroom townhouse in Manhattan. I was enrolled at Dalton, an elite NYC prep school. When I started high school, my little brother Mathew was born. Unlike me, he would never know the struggles our family faced in our early years in America. Nor did he have any memories of Nigeria. I've always envied and begrudged him for that, strange as it may seem.
By all regards I was as American as any young black or biracial man you might encounter on the streets of New York. I grew an Afro, worshipped the New York Giants, and loved hanging out in Harlem. Being one of a few minority students at Dalton, I felt the need to be surrounded by people who looked like me. It's only much later that I began asking questions about my heritage. For I was half black and half white, the son of three worlds. Nigerian and British blood flowed through my veins, but my passport had American written all over it.
At the age of eighteen, I enrolled at NYU, to study Criminal Justice. From 1994 to 1998, I studied but I also traveled a great deal. After graduating from NYU with a bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice in 1998, I moved to the City of Toronto, Ontario, where I enrolled at the University of Toronto. I earned a Law degree from U of T in 2002, then practiced Canadian law for a while. I worked for the law firm of Williamson, Fiske and Thorne, one of the top criminal defense firms in all of Ontario.
Practicing Canadian law was cool, but I soon learned that for a black male professional, even in the most racially diverse town in all of Canada, the glass ceiling hung low. Even though, with my legal acumen, I outshone most of the other rookie lawyers at the firm, I knew that I'd never make partner. In Canada, white guys are terrified of an educated, ambitious black man. In the US, they don't exactly love us but if we can make money for them, then they let us stick around. In Canada, they'd rather lose with a white guy than win with a black man. In 2008, while America and the world were engrossed in Obama fever, I returned to New York City.
My parents were happy to see me returned to them. My little brother Matthew followed into my footsteps at Dalton, though in later years he would pick Harvard University over good old NYU. I guess that's where we differed, my brother and I. After so many years at a mostly white prep school, where I was often the only face with Melanin in the room, I wanted to be among my own people. That's why I gravitated toward schools like NYU and the University of Toronto. They're among the most racially diverse universities in the continent of North America.
