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Adorable Nigerian dog festival is changing the stereotypes surrounding Africans and dogs

Dogs are often mistreated in Nigeria. Let's change that.

via Lagos Dog Festival/Instagram

Two contestants in the Dog of the Year contest at the Lagos Dog Festival.

Nigeria is far behind the rest of the world when it comes to its treatment of dogs. It is one of the few countries left in the world where they are sold for their meat and many people who do own dogs keep them for protection, instead of as pets.

Matthew Nash, a lead researcher of an in-depth Dog-Friendly Country Index, ranked the country 45 out of the 51 on a list of dog-friendly countries. For the list, countries are ranked based on animal rights, pet-friendly hotels, veterinarian availability, animal protection, risk of rabies, recognition of animal sentience and animal companionship.

The good news for Nigeria and its dogs is that Jackie Idimogu, animal rights activist and organizer of the Lagos Dog Festival, is working to change her country’s relationship with dogs and doing it in a very adorable way.

For the past four years, the Lagos Dog Festival has been a way to change stereotypes of how Africans treat dogs by throwing a carnival that brings dog lovers and their furry pals together. The carnival’s main event is the Dog of the Year competition where the canines, dressed to the nines, take a walk on the red carpet.

The competition encourages dogs and their human companions to look their best while they strut their stuff.

"Since the dogs cannot express themselves vocally by saying thank you, we created Lagos Dog Carnival to create the humans that take care of these dogs, and also give awards to these dogs, it’s a way of appreciating people for the love they show to their animals," Idimogu told Africa News.

This year’s competition saw a bunch of different breeds. Siberian huskies, American Staffordshire terriers, American Eskimos, Neapolitans, French bulldogs, Maltipoos, poodle crossbreeds and golden retrievers all strutted their stuff on the red carpet.

This year's winner was Pasha, a 6-year-old Caucasian shepherd mix. He dazzled judges with his red and black outfit and black sunglasses. His look was perfect for this year’s theme, "Splashes of Colors.”

"I chose red because it is vibrant, it is royalty, it is majestic just like him," his owner Hadiza Seidu said, according to Yahoo.

Pasha may have won because he and his owner are festival regulars.

"I would say we are like veterans because this is our fourth edition, so we’ve been coming to the carnival since 2019 and it feels really good and we look forward to it because it’s an opportunity for us to interact with other dogs, for me to meet other dog lovers and for him to get to socialize, so, I always look forward to it," Seidu told Africa News.

Idimogu is happy with how the carnival is changing minds in Nigeria. "I have been able to make humans understand that dogs are not for guards like they are not just to be kept at the gate or outside the compound," Idimogu said.

"I am happy to say that Nigerians are beginning to understand the love language of these animals,” she continued.

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This bobsled team proves it's possible to overcome every obstacle in your way.

No African country has ever competed in the bobsled at the Olympics, but that's going to change at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang.

Three former track athletes from Nigeria are taking the Olympic stage in another sport altogether, one they began training for as a team only two years ago. Their road to Olympic glory will pit the athletes against more established teams from North America, Europe, and Asia — locales that all feature one element that Nigeria lacks: snow.

But the lack of winter conditions in their homeland is only one of many obstacles that the team has faced — and overcome — in just two years of existence.In their successful run-up to the Games, the team had very little external help in handling the logistics of creating and funding an Olympic team — they did it all by themselves.

In September 2016, Seun Adigun, a 2012 Olympic hurdler for Nigeria, invited runners Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga to join her bobsled team.

They were intrigued but knew next to nothing about the sport. Omeoga later joked about the meeting, "She kidnapped us. That's the story."

But after listening to  Adigun's pitch, Omeoga and Onwumere agreed to join as the brake-women for the team's sled. A team suddenly intact, the meeting ended with a declaration from Adigun on behalf of the nascent squad:

"Today we have decided that we are going to qualify for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games," she said.

Adigun was the only member with any bobsled experience, having trained with the U.S. team just eight months after watching her first race in 2014.

But even though the others were new to the sport, their previous pedigrees served as a vital asset. Historically, track athletes have enjoyed success in the transition to bobsled teams, but they have done so under far better circumstances than the Nigerian team. The team was, quite literally, nothing more than an idea at that early point — lacking funding, knowledge, and even a cohesive strategy as to how they would qualify for the game in a scant two years' time. And they were also missing an actual bobsled.

But Adigun, in what would be one of many instances of resourcefulness, took the matter into her own hands, building a sled from a local hardware store's scraps. Adigun named the ramshackle sled "Maeflower," the variant spelling a tribute to her stepsister, nicknamed Maemae, who died in a car wreck in 2009.

But as  the qualification deadlines loomed, the team still didn't have any money.

That's why two months after the team's creation, Adigun established a GoFundMe campaign to raise the money to travel, train, and compete in a manner comparable to their rivals. Fortunately, the inspiring story of the team's inception and goal buoyed their campaign. The team succeeded in raising $75,000 from strangers, $50,000 of which came from a single anonymous donor.

In addition to their GoFundMe, the athletes sought out funds from friends and family to cover the balance of their training expenses. They "started from zero," according to Akuoma Omeoga.

With yet another issue solved — or at least "managed" — it was time for the team to begin racing.

Over the next 14 months, the Nigerian bobsled team began to coalesce by following races in Park City, Whistler, and Calgary. And after competing in five races, they qualified for the Olympics.

Can't wait to see these ladies in action #nigerianbobsledteam

A post shared by BigDukeMusic (@bigdukemusik) on

Thanks to their ingenuity and perseverance, they have became the team to watch in Pyeongchang.

"We are this Cinderella story, and we didn't really mean it to be this," Adigun told The New York Times. "It comes with a lot more pressure, but I'm not thinking about it that way. I put a plan down, and I am ready to execute that plan."

That plan won't just serve the Nigerian bobsled team. Their approach is an inspiration for any subsequent Olympic hopefuls looking to blaze their nation's trail to the biggest sporting event in the world. To compete at an Olympic level, an emergent team must contend with far more than just the athletic aspect of competition, and those challenges often require out-of-the-box thinking, just like the Nigerian team has demonstrated countless times over.

The Nigerian bobsled team's saga proves to the world, especially aspirational children who may be watching a sport for the first time, that those obstacles, much like the athletic ones, can be overcome as long as a team keeps pushing forward to both plan and prepare for everything that comes its way.

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The work of 'The Iron Lady' could help save millions of lives in Nigeria.

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In Nigeria, there is a woman known as "The Iron Lady." And how she earned that nickname is a lesson in perseverance.

Her real name is Zainabu Abubakar and she lives in a society where women don’t work, let alone hold a leadership position. But you know what? She did both.

All images via Zainabu Abubakar, used with permission.

She started working as a nurse because she wanted to help improve the health of her community, especially the health of women and children. After that, she formed a small team to start educating people about sanitation, but they only had a small amount of money to do their work. Then, in 2009, after securing a bigger budget and more staff thanks to  the support of their state governor, Abubakar's passion for helping others led her to bigger things.

She was appointed to be the new director of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Department (WASH) in Bakori, a local government area in Katsina State, Nigeria.

"The Iron Lady" doing work.

She's the first woman to ever hold that position.

Of course, her appointment was met with opposition by people who were not comfortable with a female leader, but that didn't stop "The Iron Lady" one bit.

"The one thing I have learned is that people believe mostly what they know," says Abubakar. "They never believe that you can change attitudes."

But as director of WASH, Abubakar is proving that you can change people's attitudes by simply walking the walk.

She is tackling one of the biggest problems affecting the people of Nigeria: open defecation.

"Most of our people, they are not hygiene-conscious," she says. "They don't know that not having good environment or clean environment is very important."

Abubakar (left) always leads by example.

A 2016 WaterAid report for World Toilet Day states that a staggering 130 million people in Nigeria still don't have access to a safe and private toilet. This, in turn, contributes to the 46 million people that practice open defecation, spreading serious diseases such as typhoid and cholera and severely contaminating the water supply.

It's estimated that over 44,000 Nigerian children die every year because of diarrheal diseases and 1 in every 23 Nigerian women will lose a baby due to an infection.

But with "The Iron Lady" leading the way, more and more communities are learning proper health and sanitation practices.

"When you want people to do things, you have to do it so that people will learn from you," says Abubakar. "You are not dictating to them. What you are trying to make them understand is that this is good for them. And [if] they agree that it is, they practice it."

The students at a local school learning proper hygiene for Global Handwashing Day.

Through her innovative Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) project, for example, she educates and shows different communities what proper hygiene and sanitation really is — from washing your hands the right way to using the toilet to sourcing your water efficiently. This, in turn, inspires communities to build proper facilities on their own and, more importantly, change their way of doing things.

Abubakar's success rate is the stuff of legends: In less than six years, she has transformed close to 90% of the communities that she oversees to certified open defecation free (ODF).

When "The Iron Lady" speaks, everyone listens.

"I have 428 communities in my local government. In all these communities, people know me. One — I help women. Two — I help children," adds Abubakar. "I always strive for others to see that in the community I visit."

On top of that, she's empowering local women to confront inequality.

In fact, she started a loan program with the government to help aspiring working women gain access to the resources they need to succeed.

"Before now, women don't sit where men are. And men don’t agree for women to be together with them," says Abubakar. "But now, every community you go, there’s a mix of the men and women and they’re working [together]."

Changing people's attitudes is no easy task, but it's what drives Abubakar forward.

"You have to be tolerant. ... We sit with people, we discuss, we ask them their problems, and they’ll tell you," adds Abubakar. "Honestly speaking, changing people is the most happiest thing, I believe, in my life."

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One person's trash is this woman's quilt. See this successful business made out of scraps.

People called her a mad woman — until they saw what she was creating.

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Facebook #SheMeansBusiness

In Nigeria, Olutosin Oladosu Adebowale has built a business by creating beautiful products — out of trash.


All images via Olutosin Oladosu Adebowale, used with permission.

What is this? It's a quilt!


A quilt made from scraps of discarded fabric.

Olutosin's inventive quilts, shopping bags, and more are crafted from colorful fabric scraps that tailors have thrown away.

The beautiful products are carefully handmade by women who have survived abuse — who, like the fabric scraps, have been cast aside by society.

She told Upworthy, "I am a survivor of domestic violence [so] when I became emancipated, I decided to help willing women to transform their lives too. That's why I started 'Tosin's Turn Trash to Treasure'; [to] turn abused women to assets."


Olutosin's belief in the resourcefulness of Nigerian women and her outlook on life — finding treasure in what others consider trash — are creating positive waves across Nigeria.

Through Facebook, Olutosin has met people from across the globe who agree with her that these discarded scraps from local tailors really are treasure, not trash. The organization World Pulse, a social networking platform connecting women worldwide for change, has launched Olutosin into an online community full of support, business opportunities, and love.

"Facebook has help[ed] me to showcase our products, advertising to potential customers and connected me to more than thousands global sisters who love and support my dream," she shared with Upworthy in an email.

When it comes to the circumstances of the women she employs, the impact goes beyond the women themselves, she said — it's helping their whole families.

She said of the women working with her: "They can make healthy choices now. They can create alternative avenues for finances and they can lead their own daughters aright too."

Olutosin recognized that a workspace of their own would be necessary. "We realized that we needed our own space when many women who love to join our training do not have accommodation [in] Lagos," she said.

The success of Olutosin’s business led to her meeting Sharon, who lives in the U.K., through Facebook. Sharon bought some property in the riverside community of Ibasa, Nigeria, and gave it to Olutosin. Olutosin has never met her, but Sharon's generosity is making a huge difference by making a space for women to work, learn, and mobilize a reality.


It may seem like one woman's business creating quilts from scraps. But Olutosin has bigger dreams for the work coming out of her enterprise.

She wants to sew a new reality for women.

"I wish to build a Treasure Women Town. A paradise for women and girls. Where violence against women will be a thing unheard of. Where gender equality will be the normal way of life."

And with dreams like that and a proven ability to make things happen, who wouldn't cheer her on?

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