Why You Can Be Proud of Being Nigerian
When you are asked the question, 'Where are you from?', answer it simply with a one-word response: I am from Nigeria. I am from Ghana. I am from Kenya. Etc.
When you answer such questions with, 'I am from Nigeria, Ghana or Kenya, but I live in America, or but I was brought up in England, or but I am now based in Dubai, you betray to any enlightened person asking that question that you are ashamed of your nationality and are trying to qualify it by adding caveats.
Questions about your identity should be the easiest queries to answer. When you struggle to reply simply, you raise red flags and immediately diminish yourself.
With me, there is even no need to ask the question, because I telegraph my pride in my country by the way I dress, my name, and through my delightfully thick Nigerian accent, which I will never try to change, because, after all, it is rated the 6th sexiest accent in the world by CNN.
Being a Nigerian is a source of pride and should be a source of joy, since you are from the civilisation that built the largest man-made structure ever constructed (the Walls of Benin). The second-oldest vessel ever discovered on Earth (the Dufuna Canoe), as well as great artisans who smelted bronze one thousand years ago in Ifแบนฬ and had streetlights in ancient Benin 500 years ago, make it a fountainhead of contemporary greatness. Yes, we have challenges, but we are overcoming them. And with our rate of development, the next Century will be Nigerian.
The challenges we face come with development. But we still manage to host Detty December every year, with 1.2 million tourists visiting and not one killed or injured.
Recently, foreigners such as American R'nB singer and dancer Jeffrey Daniel of Shalamar and British journalist Isha Sesay of CNN have testified that coming to Nigeria for health tourism changed their healthcare journey. Tens of thousands of foreigners from Europe and America visit Lagos for affordable healthcare.
Nigeria's GDP has grown by $67 billion in just two years, and we were the sixth-largest contributor to global GDP growth last year; we moved from Africa's top petrol importer in 2023 to the number one fuel exporter in West Africa in 2026.
The Dangote refinery has already helped Nigeria become Africa's second-largest manufacturing base. Before this administration, we were struggling between third and fourth place. Now, only Egypt, with a manufacturing capacity of $59.6 billion, is above Nigeria's $55.7 billion.
We are a people of pulchritude, having produced the first indigenous Black African Miss World (Agbani Darego) and the first Black African Nobel laureate in an academic category (Professor Wole Soyinka). We have one of the first Africans to win a Grammy Award (Sade Adu), as well as the first person born and bred in Africa to have won a Pulitzer Prize (Dele Olojede).
The wealthiest Black person on Earth, also the 36th richest individual on the planet, Aliko Dangote, is a Nigerian worth approximately $51 billion.
The second-wealthiest person in Africa, Abdulsamad Rabiu, worth $19.7 billion, is Nigerian.
Nigeria ended the Liberian and Sierra Leonean Civil Wars, restored a democratically elected Fradique de Menezes to power after he was overthrown in 2003, funded the South African liberation movement, ensured that the MPLA became the democratically elected government of Angola as opposed to the Western-backed UNITA, aided FRELIMO in their war of independence in Mozambique, nationalised African Petroleum, implemented the Indigenisation Decree that transferred the wealth of our nation from foreigners to Nigerian citizens.
This is to show you that we are a nation with great promise, and you should never be ashamed to be connected to Nigeria in any way, shape or form.
Barka da Jumu'ah, and may God bless you and your family with enough sense of self-worth that you will always be proud of Nigeria wherever you are.
Bemigho Reno Omokri