Nigeria Emoji

🇳🇬 the Nigerian flag emoji shows three vertical bands, green, white, green. It is not stored as a picture: it is two invisible regional indicator letters, 🇳 and 🇬, for Nigeria's country code NG, which phones and Macs join into the flag. On Windows, which has no flag pictures in its emoji font, the same characters show up as the letters NG, but the person you send them to will still see the flag on their phone.

The flag was designed by Michael Taiwo Akinkunmi, a Nigerian student who entered a competition in 1958, and it was first raised at independence on 1 October 1960. His design had a red sun in the white band, which the judges removed. Green is usually explained as the land and its farming, white as peace and unity. People who want the flag in text where flags don't show use 💚🤍💚 or 🟩⬜🟩, and you'll see them in usernames, match chats and every Independence Day post.

The national coat of arms is the source of the other two symbols on this page. A red eagle 🦅 stands on top of a black shield crossed by a white wavy Y, for the rivers Niger and Benue meeting at Lokoja; two white horses 🐎 hold the shield up, yellow costus flowers grow at its base, and the motto underneath reads Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress.

The eagle is also the national football team: the men are the Super Eagles, the women the Super Falcons, so 🦅 next to ⚽ or 🇳🇬 reads as football straight away. 🌍 the Africa globe is the usual sign-off for anything pan-African, from Afrobeats tours to the Africa Cup of Nations.

Naira sign ₦: copy and paste or type it

₦ is the naira sign, a capital N with two horizontal strokes, Unicode U+20A6. The naira replaced the Nigerian pound on 1 January 1973 and is divided into 100 kobo, which is commonly abbreviated k. Prices are written with the sign in front: ₦5,000, or NGN 5,000 in banking.

To type it in Microsoft Word, type 20A6 and then press Alt+X. On a Mac, add the Unicode Hex Input keyboard and hold Option while typing 20A6, or find it in the Character Viewer by searching for naira. In HTML it is ₦. Phone keyboards set to English (Nigeria) or a Nigerian language often put ₦ on the symbols page; otherwise copy it from this page. 💰 and 💸 are the money emoji Nigerians reach for, 💸 especially for the money sprayed on dancers at weddings and parties.

Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa letters to copy and paste

English is Nigeria's official language and Nigerian Pidgin its widest-spoken common one, but more than 500 languages are spoken in the country, and the three biggest have letters you won't find on an English keyboard. Yoruba has 25 letters, including ẹ, ọ and ṣ: ẹ is an open e as in "bet", ọ an open o as in "law", and ṣ sounds like English sh. Igbo has 36 letters in its standard alphabet, counting digraphs like gb, kp and nw, and adds ị, ọ, ụ and ṅ, where ṅ is the ng sound of "sing". Older printed Yoruba sometimes used a short line under the letter instead of a dot, so you may meet e̩ and o̩ in old books.

Hausa adds the hooked letters ɓ, ɗ and ƙ: ɓ and ɗ are implosives, while ƙ is ejective, so they contrast with plain b, d and k. It also writes a palatalized glottal stop as ʼy, as in ʼya (daughter); Niger uses ƴ for the same sound, which is included here too. Hausa was also long written in Arabic script, called Ajami, and some writers and schools still use it.

Yoruba and Igbo are tone languages, and the tone changes the word. Yoruba marks high tone with an acute accent and low tone with a grave, leaving mid tone unmarked: ọkọ is husband, ọkọ̀ a vehicle and ọkọ́ a hoe. Syllabic n carries tone too (ń, ǹ). For a dotted letter with a tone, put the combining accent from the grid after it: ẹ followed by ́ gives ẹ́. Gboard has Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa keyboards that type these letters, mostly by long-pressing the plain letter. For the full alphabets see the Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa collections, and the Nigerian Pidgin and English ones for the languages most Nigerians share.

Nigerian food emoji: jollof, suya, egusi and more

There is no jollof emoji, so Nigerians build it: 🍛 or 🍚 with 🍅🌶️🧅 for the tomato and pepper base and 🍗 for the chicken on the side. The jollof rivalry with Ghana is an old friendly argument, and 🇳🇬🍛 vs 🇬🇭🍛 is how it starts online. 🥘 and 🍲 stand for the pot of soup, egusi, ogbono, efo riro or pepper soup, with 🥬 for the leaves, 🐟 for fish and 🐐 for goat meat.

🍢 is the nearest emoji to a stick of suya, the spiced grilled beef sold at night by the roadside, and 🌽🥥 is roasted corn with coconut. 🍠 stands in for yam, 🍌 for plantain (dodo when it's fried), 🫘 for beans, moi moi and akara, 🥜 for groundnuts and 🥣 for garri soaked in cold water. 🍞 is the soft agege bread. For drinks, 🌺 is the hibiscus that zobo is made from, 🍹 a Chapman, the fruity Nigerian mocktail, and 🍺 a cold one at the end of the day.

Super Eagles, Afrobeats and Nollywood emoji

Football is the national conversation. ⚽🦅🇳🇬 cheers the Super Eagles, who have won the Africa Cup of Nations three times (1980, 1994, 2013), and 🏅 recalls the 1996 Olympic gold in Atlanta, the first by an African football team. 🏃 nods to Nigeria's sprinters, 🏀 to its basketball players and 🥊 to its boxers and fighters.

Music is the other export. 🎶🎤🔥 is the classic caption for an Afrobeats tune, 💃🕺 for the dance it starts, and 🎷 belongs to Fela Kuti, the saxophonist who pioneered Afrobeat in Lagos in the late 1960s and 1970s. 🪘 is the closest emoji to the talking drum. 🎬🎭 stand for Nollywood, one of the largest film industries in the world by number of films, and 👑 for the traditional rulers, the Obas, Emirs and Obis, and for anyone being called king or queen in the comments.

Nigerian holidays, Lagos and everyday life emoji

Independence Day on 1 October is 🇳🇬🎉🎆 and "Happy Independence Day, Naija 💚🤍💚". 12 June is Democracy Day. The big Muslim holidays are called Sallah: 🌙 for Eid at the end of Ramadan and 🐏 for Eid al-Adha, Ileya in Yoruba, when families buy a ram; in the north they bring Durbar processions of decorated horsemen 🐎. Christmas 🎄⛪ sends huge numbers of people home to their villages and families, and 🙏 is how most messages of thanks and prayer end.

An owambe is a big Yoruba party, and the word now covers any lavish Nigerian celebration: 🥳💃💸 for the dancing and the money sprayed on the couple, 💍 for the wedding, often in matching aso-ebi outfits worn by the guests.

🏙️ is the Lagos skyline and 🌉 its long lagoon bridges such as Third Mainland Bridge; 🏖️ the beaches along the Atlantic. Getting around has its own emoji: 🚐 the yellow danfo minibus, 🛺 the keke tricycle, 🏍️ the okada motorbike taxi and 🛶 the canoes on the lagoon and the creeks of the Niger Delta. 💡 is "Up NEPA!", what people shout when the power comes back on, named after the old electricity authority.

🌴 is the oil palm, source of palm oil and palm wine, 🛢️ crude oil from the Niger Delta, and 🪨 the great granite rocks like Zuma Rock near Abuja and Olumo Rock in Abeokuta. 🦍 is for the Cross River gorilla, the rarest gorilla in the world, which lives only in the hills on the Nigeria–Cameroon border, and 🐘 for the elephants of Yankari.