I'm of Nigerian descent, from the Yoruba tribe. Names are very significant in that culture. It basically states your purpose in life.
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
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.
Alex Iwobi
My target is to get as many call-ups as I can, get as many games as I can and win many trophies with Nigeria.
Sometimes in a Premier League game the fans are a bit quiet but in Nigeria you just hear trumpets, everything. The atmosphere is so different compared to England.
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.
Nigeria is a great footballing nation and deserves to assume her rightful place in Africa and world football and I am keen to be part of a team that achieves this goal.
I mean I've seen so many kids on the street when we're like in the bus, they're screaming 'go Nigeria, go Nigeria,' so to represent them I'm just proud.
Coach Amodu without question is a colossus and football icon and has over the years made meaningful contribution to Nigerian football both at club and international levels.
Coach Amodu has coached the cream of Nigerian football players and I had the privilege of working with him albeit for a very short time during the preparations for the two-legged Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers against Egypt.
It was a difficult decision picking Nigeria over England.
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.
The love Nigeria showed me... when I played for them in a friendly, the fans were just crazy. The fans almost eat you up because they love you so much.
I feel very honoured and proud to be playing for Nigeria.
I have always wanted to play for Nigeria and I enjoy each minute we gather and when we play.
If bad and inexperienced politicians control power in Nigeria, my wealth may turn into poverty, and I am not ready to become a poor man.
Aliko Dangote
Because of my Nigerian heritage, Jumia's use of technology to deliver innovative online services to consumers and improve the quality of everyday life in Africa is very important to me. I'm thrilled to be a part of this unique enterprise that is shaping the future of digital Africa.
Andre Iguodala
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.
Angel Di Maria
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.
Annie Ilonzeh
I come from an interracial family: My father is from Nigeria, and so he is African-American, and my mother is American and white, so I rarely see skin color. It's never an issue for me.
Brand New Wayo: Funk, Fast Times and Nigerian Boogie Badness 1979-1983' covers a short chunk of time in Nigeria's musical culture - one that might have lasted longer had the label spearheading the movement at the time, Phonodisk, not been so financially mismanaged.
Anthony Fantano
Outside of Peruvian rap-rock, few genre tags raise eyebrows quite like the words 'Nigerian disco.'
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.
Am I feminist? I don't know. I'm not really sure what that is. I am all up for equality to a certain extent, although in the home, I do feel this is where the mother excels and the man needs to step back a bit. My family is from Nigeria, and this is our culture.
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'd always been interested in Nigeria's past.
I'm still very interested in the things that happened in the '80s and the '70s because I think that they were very important years for Nigeria. In the '80s, we were under a military dictatorship for quite a while, and I think that the way we engage with our country as citizens was shaped in many ways by the events that took place in that time.
There is a strong view in Nigeria, as in many other cultures, that a marriage is not complete without children. I don't agree; I'm wary of the idea that people have to have some particular functionality in order to be full members of society.
When I was a child, there were two Nigerian writers in every bookshop: Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka.
Some of my reactions are very Nigerian. I still believe that words are things.
You cannot come to a Nigerian restaurant without having pepper soup.
I am one year older than Nigeria at 51. In a human life, 51 might be old. But it is very young for a nation. By that, I mean a Nigeria conscious of itself as a nation.
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.
I grew up in Africa, in Nigeria. I never knew, I never had any reasonable encounter with football. I saw football on Sky News. I thought there were people dressed like extraterrestrials, you know, like they were going to Mars or something, headgears and shoulder pads. And I wondered why, as a child, why did they have to dress that way.
My dad is Jean-Paul Bourelly, a really prestige guitar player in Europe, and he toured with Miles Davis. I was always surrounded by the most prestige kind of musicians from Senegal, Trinidad, Poland, Nigeria, and all around the world.
Nigeria has moved into low-middle-income, but their north is very poor, and the health care systems there have broken down.
There is no country in the world with the diversity, confidence and talent and black pride like Nigeria.
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.
I like to be called a Nigerian rather than somebody from the Third World or the developing or whatever.
You are only as rich as where you come from, and Nigeria has a lot of poverty.
I'm Nigerian. I'm African. I have a lot to say. Apart from what I say, though, is the feeling. People can relate to that feeling. It's a reciprocal relationship. They feed off me and I feed off them.
I'm from the south side of Nigeria, a place called Port Harcourt City... No one ever makes it out of there. I wanted to put it on the map.
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 would find myself being inspired by things that I've heard as a kid: Nigerian music or African music, some French music or some Jamaican music. When it's time for music to be made, it's almost like my ancestors just come into me and then it's them.
I sort of consider myself a Nigerian who spends a lot of time in the U.S.
In primary school in south-eastern Nigeria, I was taught that Hosni Mubarak was the president of Egypt. I learned the same thing in secondary school. In university, Mubarak was still president of Egypt. I came to assume, subconsciously, that he - and others like Paul Biya in Cameroon and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya - would never leave.
Nigerian politics has been, since the military dictatorships, largely non-ideological. Rather than a battle of ideas, it is about who can pump in the most money and buy the most access.
There has always been a strange dissonance between the public and the private in Nigeria.
I live half the year in Nigeria, the other half in the U.S. But home is Nigeria - it always will be. I consider myself a Nigerian who is comfortable in the world. I look at it through Nigerian eyes.
I think I'm ridiculously fortunate. I consider myself a Nigerian - that's home; my sensibility is Nigerian. But I like America, and I like that I can spend time in America.
You know, I don't think of myself as anything like a 'global citizen' or anything of the sort. I am just a Nigerian who's comfortable in other places.
