Nigeria Quotes

In Nigeria, along with its West African neighbor Ghana, women are now starting businesses in greater numbers than men.

Pope John Paul II not only visited Nigeria twice but stood by the country in its fight against dictatorship and injustice.

So many times I’ve encountered people who are just kind of like, ‘Yeah, Nigeria,’ and, you know, thump their chest and seem very sure of, like, being Nigerian. And I’m just kind of, like, I wish I could be that sure.

From 1967 to ’70, Nigeria fought a war – the Nigeria-Biafra war. And in the middle of that war, I was 14 years old. We spent much of our time with my mother cooking. For the army – my father joined the army as a brigadier – the Biafran army. We were on the Biafran side.

In Nigeria, my grandma sold everything – everything – for my mum’s education.

My first World Cup appearance remains fresh in my memory and what made it incredible was that I had made my first appearance for Nigeria just a year before.

In Nigeria, if you say you’re a singer, people say, ‘So what? Everyone sings.’ In Germany, my voice stood out more.

When you talk about the oil wealth you compare nations. There are some nations with less than five million people. Nigeria has 150 million people. I cannot say that all the money earned from oil since 1958, when the first drop of oil was exported from this country to date, that the money has been effectively used.

Nigeria has always been my choice if called up, and when they did, I was happy.

My grandma was raised in Ghana, and she went back there to work, so she could earn money for my mum’s education in Nigeria. It’s where it all began, and that dedication to education is the only reason I’m here.

I’ve got Africa stamped on my chest, and I’ve outlined Nigeria because that’s my bloodline.

The fundamental for the sustainable growth of Nigeria is not in the hydro-carbon industry but in agriculture.

I’m very proud to represent Nigeria but I would like to say thank you to England for the chance they gave me, it was a difficult decision.

Nigeria’s unity is one for which enough blood has been spilled and many hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost. Many have paid for the unity of this country with their lives, and it will be wrong of us, as men and women of goodwill in this generation, to toy with those sacrifices that have been made.

I was a supporter of the desire, in my section of Nigeria, to leave the federation because it was treated very badly with something that was called genocide in those days.

Nigeria, with the oil sector, had the reputation of being corrupt and not managing its own public finances well. So what did we try to do? We introduced a fiscal rule that de-linked our budget from the oil price.

I loved ‘Ghana Must Go’ by Taiye Selasi. It’s about a first-generation African family living in America that has to return home to Nigeria when their estranged father passes away.

When Nigeria actually gave me the call-up I thought ‘oh, it’s going to be a challenge, I don’t go back there a lot, I don’t really speak the language.’ I wasn’t speaking the language as fluently as I am now, so it was always going to be a challenge, but it was a challenge I decided to take and change nationalities.

When I arrived in Manchester for the first time, it took me five seconds to realize that it was a very different place than where I come from. It is cold, yes, but people also do things very differently than we do in Nigeria. The culture was different, and everything looked different.

Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa. If Nigeria succeeds at democratic governance it will be an anchor for all of West Africa. Africa needs a strong Nigeria.

In the United States, if you’re African-American, it can be assumed that your family has been here for generations. In Europe, colonialism is much more alive, and it’s assumed you’re from Nigeria or Senegal.

With 10 per cent of Nigeria’s total land mass, 80 per cent of which is arable, Niger state symbolises the hope and greatness of Nigeria and has potential to feed the continent.

Wilf is a great passer of the ball. I know him and I played with him from the Under-17s team with Nigeria, so he’s a very good passer.

When I go back home now, when I go back to Nigeria now, I get off the plane in Lagos and I just don’t think of race. I get on the plane and arrive in Atlanta, and immediately I’m aware of race.

How is it that Nigeria’s military, which has a good record across West Africa, cannot claim back to 14 out of 774 local governorates from Boko Haram? They have to ask for mercenaries from South Africa? How the mighty has fallen!

In Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Angola and Cameroon maize is a staple, yet the earliest mention of maize in west Africa comes from a Portuguese document that lists it as being loaded on to slave ships bound for Africa.

After Nigeria, we are the second biggest black African nation. We are the headquarters of the African Union. We are the only African country that has never been colonized. This is perhaps the last surviving African civilization.

You see, I was told stories, we were all told stories as kids in Nigeria. We had to tell stories that would keep one another interested, and you weren’t allowed to tell stories that everybody else knew. You had to dream up new ones.

As an NBA executive, I’m always looking for untapped potential. As a proud native of Nigeria, I believe that Africa is one of the world’s greatest resources in that area.

I was asked by a journalist to sum up the story in a minute, and I was like, ‘No.’ It goes from Trump to Brexit to Russian espionage to military operations in Afghanistan to hacking the president of Nigeria. Where do you even begin?

To be able to come back to Nigeria and get so much love for my work is my biggest life blessing. I’ve always hoped to never get lost in translation with me being British-born.

Nigeria has had the misfortune – no, the fortune – of seeing the worst face of capitalism anywhere in Africa. The masses have seen it, they are disgusted, and they want an alternative.

I do not have any regrets whatsoever in opting to play for Nigeria and will always do my best whenever I put on the green white green colours of Nigeria.

Imagine what Nigeria could do for Africa if it was also free of Boko Haram’s violence.

Friends at school were always quite shocked that we holidayed in Nigeria, but it was all pretty middle-class, really.

My family is from Nigeria, and my full name is Uzoamaka, which means ‘The road is good.’

Educating our young girls is the foundation for Nigeria’s growth and development.

My father is Nigerian; my mother is from Texas and African-American. My father was the first in his family to go to university. He flew from Nigeria to Los Angeles in the ’70s to go to UCLA, where he met my mother. They broke up before I was born, and he returned to Nigeria.

My mum’s from a very rural village in Nigeria, she grew up in a war, and for her it was really important that my brothers and I knew how to fend for ourselves. My dad bought me a Swiss army knife for my 13th birthday and we used to go camping and he showed me how to light fires.

It was a difficult decision picking Nigeria over England.

It’s true that people will take advantage of you in Nigeria, but this happens everywhere in the world.

To meet the expectations of the majority of our people, and to open up new vistas of economic opportunity so that the aspirations of Nigerians can stand a fair chance of being fulfilled in a lifetime, there must be a truly committed leadership in a democratic Nigeria.

If you’re able to grow up in Nigeria and go through certain things, you’re able to tackle anything around the world because you’re able to live wherever, if you can survive in a city like Lagos or Warri or Niger Delta, as far as I’m concerned.

Boko Haram, by itself, has destroyed large areas in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger.

I’m from Newcastle and went to Cambridge University and I worried whether I’d fit in; I’m mixed race, so my mum grew up in Nigeria and my dad grew up in England, and I’d sometimes wonder which culture I felt I identified with better.

When your economy is subject to the whims of Libya and Nigeria and Venezuela, you have a problem.

Nigeria has its problems, nobody denies that, but there is a surge of spiritual – I would say, Christian – dynamics that are awesome.

I’ve been in Nigeria myself personally alone when elections have been going on and it was a bit ropey.

There are about 100 German companies in Nigeria, and German investors have earned a lot of respect from Nigeria because of the quality of the manufactured goods they produce, especially machinery.

I was born in Wisconsin, but I quickly moved to Nigeria as a toddler.

My full name is Olatunde Olateju Olaolorun Fagbenle. I was named after my grandfather. It’s Yoruba, which is, like, southern Nigeria.

Stephen Keshi is a good coach and he has changed Nigeria into a respectable team.

I entered the Miss Nigeria in America pageant – yes, it’s a thing that existed. This was when I was getting my masters.

My joy knows no bounds… I will devote all my energy and all the powers available to me to the service of Nigeria and humanity.

Traditional Anglicans – whether in Nigeria or Nottingham – have been wary, at best, of the acceptance and welcome given to gay men and women and their sexual choices by secular society.

I feel very honoured and proud to be playing for Nigeria.

I was raised in Nigeria, and my mother is white, but I never saw her as white, not until I came to America. She was just my mother. She didn’t really have a color.

I’ve often dreamed about going back to Nigeria, but that’s a very romantic notion. It’s a hideous country to go to in reality.

My grandfather was the king of a region in western Nigeria, where I had the privilege to live for seven years while growing up. But what we think of as royalty in the U.K. is very different to royalty in Nigeria: if you were to throw a stone there, you would hit about 30 princes.

I can guarantee you that at least 90% of my people that are my age group in Nigeria – who are considered the youth – had no clue about how Nigeria, the real origins of Nigeria.

I haven’t been to Nigeria, but my dad and I have talked about going. I have a grandma over there who’s been here.

People are always surprised when they meet me. I was in Nigeria and I went to one of the radio stations and they were like, ‘Aww you look cute!’ They were expecting me to look more rough, and I was like: ‘Yeah, I’m polite!’

If you are a writer from Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, you don’t have the luxury of being apolitical. You can’t say, ‘That’s politics. I’m just doing my work.’

Nigeria has moved into low-middle-income, but their north is very poor, and the health care systems there have broken down.

Education from six-year-old to 14 is compulsory in Nigeria, but the simple fact is that a lack of resources, coupled with peoples’ inability to afford books and uniforms mean the reality for millions of Nigerian children is a life without education.

Nigeria shed the last of a succession of brutal military dictatorships in 1997 and adopted a democratic form of government only in 1999. Our elections of 2003, 2007, and 2011 were complicated and fraught with tension, but each one has shown remarkable progress.

My step dad’s from Nigeria, so he listened to Highlife music from Africa. He was also into hip-hop and R&B, and from that, I started to listen to music from his collection and liking it, developing my own taste.

When I was 24 I went to Nigeria and it was such a culture shock, growing up in Australia and suddenly being the only white man in this unit full of black men.

People in Nigeria weren’t happy that I went to Qatar. They said ‘why did you go there of all places?’ They missed watching me on television but sometimes you have to think about yourself and your future as well.

Each one of us, and, indeed, all those who aspire to national leadership must bring their own visions, views and styles to the business of reforming Nigeria, and the search for solutions.

You see, when I was young, I loved playing football. But where I grew up in southern Nigeria, it was kind of like a ghetto. It was a tough place to be a kid. You had to work very hard to make a living there, and my family did not have the extra funds to buy a real ball.

I come from Nigeria, and we live by the idea that it takes a village. So my entire team. I live by my team: my friends, my neighbors, my teachers – they’re the people who taught me how to be a free actor.

Our dream is to build a hospital in Nigeria and four other countries in Africa.

Race, for me, should be social and cultural, rather than the colour of your skin. Anton Ferdinand would have more in common with John Terry than he does with some West African from Nigeria. John Terry will have more in common with Anton Ferdinand than a Slav from Eastern Europe who happens to be white.

If there is one person in Nigeria that believes that petroleum prices should not go up by one naira, it is President Buhari.

Mandy Sutter’s ‘Bush Meat’ triumphs in its lean prose and true dialogue, in its disarming humour, in its evocation of a family divided by sexism and racism in 1960s Nigeria.

Nigeria is still grappling with the negative consequences of the use of opacity by senior members of government and their cronies between 1993 and 1998, awarding themselves juicy contracts in the extractive industry.

We have partnered with hospitals. We do check-ups. We talk to the parents – we educate them – and at the same time, we take the kids to other countries for operations. The goal of the foundation is to build our own cardiac hospitals in Africa, starting in Nigeria.

My dad’s from Nigeria and my mom’s from Grenada and they both went into medicine. My dad’s a psychiatrist and my mom’s a nurse so I was going to go into medicine, also.

I grew up in northern Nigeria.

My dad’s Nigerian, and I remember going to Nigeria, and all of these kids and adults and everyone in-between knew who TuPac was. They had TuPac t-shirts, TuPac posters, TuPac cassettes… everyone knew TuPac, and sometimes that was the only English that they spoke, was TuPac lyrics.

My mom, she’s from Ireland, coached tennis in Nigeria when she was a missionary and turned me on to it when I was young.

The biggest opportunity in 2013 is in Africa. It has seven out of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world. In Nigeria alone there are 100 million people with mobile phones. In total, 300 million Africans – five times the population of Britain – are in the middle class.

My father was a black, working-class man who arrived here with no money in his pocket from Nigeria; my mum came from more of a middle-class background, whose father had prosecuted the Nazis at Nuremberg.

If I have got an injury, I have got an injury. Whenever I want to play for Nigeria, I must be 100 percent, I want to give everything. But if I have got an injury, I don’t want to force myself, because I am going to look stupid on the pitch.

I come from a part of Nigeria where a lot of value is placed on implicit communication. The ‘well brought up’ child is the one who can pick up nonverbal cues from adults and interpret them correctly.

I like to say, ‘I spend one-third of my time in Nigeria, one-third in Europe or America, and one-third on a plane.’

The U.S. government understands the importance of Nigeria in Africa and the world at large.

I’ve had trouble now and again in Nigeria because I have spoken up about the mistreatment of factions in the country because of difference in religion. These are things we should put behind us.

I have a lot of very happy memories of the Olympic Games, and the final against Nigeria and the goal mean an awful lot to me.

The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it’s a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high.

I was raised well. My parents are from Nigeria; their culture is respectful. Very respectful. But I learnt that you have to be determined. It’s not violence or aggression. It’s sheer determination.

I always say in my camps in Africa, in everything we do, ‘My name is Masai and I’m from Nigeria.’ My name is Masai and I’m from Nigeria. It’s plain and simple. If you’re from La Loche or you are from Toronto you should be proud of it.

People just think Africa is this one thing. So if you’re from Nigeria, then you’re the same as somebody from Kenya; not realizing that within Nigeria, right, we have 250 different ethnic groups, right? Two hundred and fifty different languages.

My parents were among the first families from their area to leave Nigeria and come to America, the land of the free.