Nigeria

Famous Nigerian People: Nigerian Artists, Scientists, Leaders, Musicians, Politicians and Athletes

Nigeria is proud to see many great names rise on its land: writers and scientists, singers and actors, world famous sportsmen, who made a great contribution to the development of the Nigerian society.

:: List of Famous People from Nigeria ::

Benedict Chuka Enwonu
Benedict Chuka Enwonu is Nigeria’s leading painter and sculptor who has gained international fame in the 1950s and ’60s for figurative sculptures and paintings in which he combined classical Western training with traditional African elements. He has exhibited sculpture around the world, at London’s Berkeley galleries (1947), Howard University (1950), the Goethe Institut (1976) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2001).

Seal
The two-time Grammy Award-winning English/Nigerian soul vocalist and songwriter, is known for his numerous international hits and his marriage to supermodel Heidi Klum. The success of his second album titled SEAL sold over 4 million copies in the US alone and went double platinum. Some of his most important awards are: Q award for Best New Act, 1991; Brit Awards for Best Album, Best Male Artist and Best Video, 1992; Grammy Award nomination for album of the year, 1995 for Seal.

Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian prominent writer, poet and playwright. He is regarded as Africa’s most distinguished playwright, as he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, the first African so honored. Soyinka has written two novels, The Interpreters (1965), narratively, a complicated work which has been compared to Joyce’s and Faulkner’s. Soyinka’s other plays include Kongi’s Harvest (1967), The Lion and the Jewel (1964), The Trials of Brother Jero (1964), The Bacchae of Euripides (1973), Opera Wonyosi (1977), A Play of Giants (1985), Requiem for a Futurologist (1985) and Beautification of Area Boy (1994).

Dick Tiger
Dick Tiger is the greatest fighter in Africa’s history, one of the most talented fighters to come out of the African continent. He became a two-time undisputed world middleweight titlist. Tiger earned an undisputed Light-Heavyweight world championship. In 1962, Tiger won the world middle weight boxing championship. He was an inspiration for other Nigerians to go into boxing.

Agbani Darego
Darego was crowned Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria in 2001 and In November 2001, she traveled to South Africa to compete in the Miss World. Agbani Darego was crowned Miss World in 2001, making her the first black woman from an African country ever to win the pageant.

Mohammed Bah Abba
Mohammed Bah Abba is a Nigerian teacher who became famous for his pot-in-pot cooling system for refrigeration. He received the $75,000 Rolex Award Enterprise for his invention. With no electricity, and therefore no refrigeration, perishable foods spoil within days. Such spoilage causes disease and loss of income. “Mohammed Bah Abba was motivated by his concern for the rural poor and by his interest in indigenous African technology to seek a practical, local solution to these problems”. His extremely simple and inexpensive earthenware “Pot-in-Pot” cooling device is starting to revolutionize lives in this semi-desert area.

Flora Nwapa
A famous Nigerian writer, teacher and administrator, cabinet minister, a forerunner of a whole generation of African women writers, who is mostly known for being the first African woman to publish a novel in English. She has been called the mother of modern African literature.
“When I do write about women in Nigeria, in Africa, I try to paint a positive picture about women because there are many women who are very, very positive in their thinking, who are very, very independent, and very, very industrious.” (from an interview with Marie Umeh, 1995)

Michael Olowokandi
Michael Olowokandi is a famous Nigerian professional basketball player formerly in the NBA. In 366 career regular season NBA games (335 games started), Olowokandi has averaged 9.5 points, 7.7 rebounds, and 1.63 blocked shots per game. In 15 playoff games (2 starts), he has averaged 2.1 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 0.73 blocks per game.