Sam Otigba™️

FOR THE CULTURE™️
You are probably looking for @samuelotigba

[Sam Otigba™️ @SamOtigba]

Still Black; but what if we added a bit of COLR? 👀

[Sam Otigba @SamuelOtigba]

This year, I’ll be designing and dropping products in colour.

For four years, I mourned my mum through her battle with cancer, wearing mostly black.

She’s gone now, and I’m finally ready to let colour back; our boy brought colour back into our lives.

[Sam Otigba™️ @SamOtigba]

🖤

[Sam Otigba @SamuelOtigba]

Godfidence 🖤

[Sam Otigba @SamuelOtigba]

Godfidence 🖤

[The Otigbas @TheOtigbas]

Forever creating endless moments 🖤🤎

[Tunde Onakoya @Tunde_OD]

The beauty of setting one’s heart on.

Today marks exactly eight years since we officially kickstarted the Chess in Slums project. Oh, how beautifully time flies.

It still feels like yesterday when, with trembling hands, I committed my heart to this seemingly impossible miracle of doing great things from small places.

I feel immense gratitude today, above all things. But I also want to share a recent contemplation from one of my many mundane musings about life.

Sometime in July, while I was in New York, I decided to take a really long walk through the city. New York is a deeply fascinating place, with so much to see and admire that one can easily get lost in its allure and chaos.

So I gave myself a simple task to find and photograph everything in color blue.

Suddenly, it felt like the city changed, at least in my own eyes.

A blue bicycle chained to a railing. A stranger in a blue coat. A young boy in a blue shirt held closely by his mother, one of his hands carefully wrapped in a blue cast. Blue tents. A small patch of sky reflected in the glass of a building.

By the end of my walk, I had taken so many wonderful pictures of all the beautiful blue things my curiosity could capture.

Of course, the city hadn’t changed. The blue had always been there.

What changed was that I had decided to look for it.

I haven’t stopped thinking about that experience ever since, about the strange and beautiful power of setting one’s heart on something, and how what we choose to look for in the world eventually teaches us how to see.

It feels even more meaningful today because eight years ago, I set my heart on the Chess in Slums project, and it became my own trail of blue through the world.

It taught me to see possibility in the lives of children in places where poverty had robbed them of the basic dignity of being human beings with dreams and aspirations.

We went into those places with chessboards and a simple belief: there is remarkable brilliance here, if only someone is willing to look for it.

It has been the greatest privilege of my life to witness what happens when a child who has been invisible for most of their life finally encounters someone who sees them.

And perhaps that is another thing I have learned: we do not only find what we are looking for. Sometimes, by looking long enough and loving deeply enough, we help it become visible to others too.

These eight years have carried the full spectrum of being alive: beautiful moments, difficult years, mistakes, exhaustion, hurt, disappointment, uncertainty, and days when the size of the problem made our efforts feel painfully small.

But chess has taught me something about small things.

The pawn is the smallest, most ordinary piece on the chessboard. Yet hidden within its humble beginning is the possibility of becoming something far greater than anyone imagined.

Perhaps children are like that too.

There are still millions of children across Africa whose brilliance remains hidden behind circumstances they did not choose.

So we will keep looking.

We will keep going to the small places.

To help them burn brighter and hold them up long enough for the world to see.

And perhaps this is the beauty of setting one’s heart on something: That you begin by searching the world for a particular kind of light….

Then one day, you look around and realize you have spent your life helping to create it.

Happy anniversary, @chessinslums.

To our incredible team, volunteers, partners, friends and supporters over the years, thank you for believing, for staying, and for teaching me in the most profound way that no amount of darkness can conquer a flicker of light.

Eight years later, my heart is still set on the same thing.

This is Day One, all over again.

[Sam Otigba @SamuelOtigba]

Quote this with a black-and-white photo of you.

[The Otigbas @TheOtigbas]

This is the way 🖤
Happy birthday my baby @DrBisola

[Sam Otigba @SamuelOtigba]

Never done this before, but it’s worth a shot. Can we flood the replies with kind words for my wife?

She’s truly the best woman I know, and I’d love for her to open X to a timeline full of love 🖤

[Sam Otigba™️ @SamOtigba]

Isale Eko Project ~ @chessinslums

“The future grows,
where courage stays,
Children of light,
Where Lagos builds,
in countless ways.

Our Light has come,
Our Light is here,
Turns hardship’s shadow into light,
As long as we are in this world,
We are the light of this world.”

[Sam Otigba™️ @SamOtigba]

"Day 1
We cannot tell the children there is no hope. We must find and hone the diamonds in the rough, because it is possible to do great things from a small place 🖤” ~ @Tunde_OD

[Sam Otigba @SamuelOtigba]

2025 wrapped.
A year of firsts & collaborations.

• Deepened my faith.
• International drop: @theBAL (NBA) x Cacao
• Brand work: Ashluxury, Nivea, La Roche-Posay, Homecoming (to name a few)
• Product drop: Dreamers Fila (with @Tunde_OD)
• Community built. Apparel brand launched: @SamOtigba
• First public mural with LSAF
• Social impact with @Tunde_OD & @hackSultan
- SIWES/Internships
- Laptop Support

You can just do things 🖤

[Sam Otigba™️ @SamOtigba]

@SamuelOtigba 🖤

[Sam Otigba @SamuelOtigba]

Hello 2026 🖤
Checking in on everyone.
If you made it to this year, drop a 👋🏽 and introduce yourself.

[Sam Otigba @SamuelOtigba]

🚨 Model Call
• Color palette > 👩🏿‍🦲👨🏿‍🦲👩🏾🧔🏾‍♂️👵🏽👴🏽👩🏼‍🦱👨🏼‍🦱🧕🏿
• Male & Female
• Plus-size included
• Models with vitiligo & albinism welcome
📍 Must reside in Nigeria

Apply:
• Quote/comment with a clear, unedited photo
• Female: 5’6”+
• Male: 5’10”+

Please RT / Share 🙏🏾 #Jobs59

[Sam Otigba @SamuelOtigba]

If you’re an upcoming model interested in working with me this year, please reply to the tweet below.

[Sam Otigba @SamuelOtigba]

Upon these walls,
The people speak,
Through our eyes,
With steady hands,
with hearts unique.

We see light,
Through storms they stand,
through nights they strive,
Their art declares,
“We are alive”.

The future grows,
where courage stays,
Children of light,
Where Lagos builds,
in countless ways.

Children of the day
Each mural,
Carved from sweat and fight,
Our Light has come,
Turns hardship’s shadow into light,
Our Light is here.

So brush by brush,
Their stories start,
Resilient souls,
Resilient art,
The great light within us,
The light of life,
the light of the world.

We are alive,
Not silence, steel,
nor time can part,
We are the day,
and the day lives in us.
We carry light;
the Bright and Morning light,
the light of the moon,
night nor day moves us.

Turn on the great light within,
This great light of mine,
Thine everlasting light,
As long as I am in the world,
I am the light of this world.

Light Be.

SO ‘25’ (City Of Light: We Are Alive)

[Sam Otigba @SamuelOtigba]

Feet. Ears. Hair. (Upcoming models)
Across Nigeria 🇳🇬
If that’s you, stay ready 📌
More calls dropping soon 🚨

Please RT / Share 🙏🏿
#ForTheCulture 🖤

[Sam Otigba™️ @SamOtigba]

#ForTheCulture 🖤

[Sam Otigba @SamuelOtigba]

2025 wrapped.
A year of firsts & collaborations.

• Deepened my faith.
• International drop: @theBAL (NBA) x Cacao
• Brand work: Ashluxury, Nivea, La Roche-Posay, Homecoming (to name a few)
• Product drop: Dreamers Fila (with @Tunde_OD)
• Community built. Apparel brand launched: @SamOtigba
• First public mural with LSAF
• Social impact with @Tunde_OD & @hackSultan
- SIWES/Internships
- Laptop Support

You can just do things 🖤

[Sam Otigba @SamuelOtigba]

You can just do things 🖤