Every October 1, Nigeria turns green and white.
The colours appear everywhere: on buildings, cars, school uniforms, clothes and social media pages. For a country of more than 200 million people, the Nigerian flag is remarkably simple. Two green panels, one white panel in the middle. No complicated symbols, no elaborate patterns. Just three vertical bands that most Nigerians could probably draw from memory.
But the flag we know today was not quite the flag that won the competition to design it.
In 1959, as Nigeria prepared for independence, the government held a national competition for a new flag. Almost 3,000 designs were reportedly submitted, each offering a different idea of what the new nation could look like.
Among them was a design by Michael Taiwo Akinkunmi, a 23-year-old Nigerian studying electrical engineering at Norwood Technical College in London.
Akinkunmi’s design featured the three vertical panels we recognise today: green, white and green. But there was one important difference. In the centre of the white panel was a red sun with 16 rays.
The design was selected, but the sun did not make it to the final version. It was removed before the flag was officially adopted, leaving behind the simpler green-and-white design that would become one of Nigeria’s most recognisable national symbols.
Why Green and White?
The colours were chosen to represent important ideas about the country.
Green speaks to Nigeria’s agricultural wealth and natural resources, while white represents peace and unity.
On October 1, 1960, the design became Nigeria’s official national flag as the country gained independence from British colonial rule.
More than six decades later, the flag has become part of the visual language of Nigeria itself. It appears at Independence Day celebrations, international sporting events, government buildings and moments when Nigerians, at home and abroad, want to signal where they come from.
And perhaps that is what makes the story behind it interesting.
The flag was designed by a young Nigerian living thousands of miles from home. His original idea was selected from thousands of entries, then simplified before becoming the symbol we know today. What eventually emerged was a design that could be drawn in a few lines but came to represent an entire country.
So when green and white take over October, there is more to the colours than decoration. They carry a piece of Nigeria’s journey from the years before independence to the country it is today.
A simple flag. A young designer. Thousands of ideas. And a story that has lasted since 1960.
Happy Independence Day, Nigeria.
