Most profiles of Bright Osayi-Samuel said the same thing: the Super Eagles right-back was born in Okija. Then, in a BellaNaija interview published on 16 February 2026, he was asked where he is from. “I was very surprised when everyone said I was from Okija. It's not true; I'm half Ondo and half Edo.”
| Bright Osayi-Samuel | At a glance |
|---|---|
| Born | 31 December 1997, Nigeria |
| Roots | Half Ondo, half Edo, in his own words |
| Club | Birmingham City, Championship |
| Position | Right-back, formerly a winger |
| Nigeria | More than 35 caps; debut v Portugal, 17 November 2022 |
| Contract | Three-year deal signed 4 July 2025 |
| Salary | Not disclosed; estimates only |
From a Charlton park to Bloomfield Road
The family left Nigeria when he was a boy. They spent a spell in Spain before settling in London. “I speak Spanish too,” he told BellaNaija. Football started on the grass of South East London. “My football journey started with my mum taking me to a local park that had an amateur league team,” he said. The team was Valley Park Rangers, in Charlton. He was nine.
Blackpool came next.
“I was 15 and had to move away from family and friends to start my dream of being a professional footballer,” he recalled. The Seasiders handed him his senior debut in 2015, and the Blackpool Gazette counts 79 senior games for the club before he moved on to Queens Park Rangers in September 2017.
He flourished at Loftus Road. QPR named him Young Player of the Year for 2019/20.
Club Brugge came calling in the summer of 2020. QPR accepted a second bid, believed to be around £4.7 million. Sky Sports reported that the player turned the move down. Fenerbahçe agreed a pre-contract with him in January 2021 and brought him to Istanbul later that month.
Istanbul, a new position and a call from Peseiro
Turkey changed the player.
“They converted me from a winger to a fullback,” he said. He made 178 appearances in four and a half years, and Turkish football showed him its rough side too, notably the March 2024 pitch invasion at Trabzonspor that we covered at the time.
The Nigeria question had followed him since his QPR days, when he said the family had discussed it without any pressure, as we reported back then. Jose Peseiro settled it.
Nobody had to persuade him. “I'm Nigerian and I'm proud being a Nigerian,” he told NFF TV, ThisDay reported. He started the 4-0 friendly defeat to Portugal in Lisbon on 17 November 2022.
Later he went further. “For me, I was heavily influenced by my country,” he told OmaSportsTV. His parents took him to Nigerian weddings and raised him on Nigerian food. England, he argued, could not match that. “The togetherness, the vibes.”
He was in the squad that finished runners-up at AFCON 2023 in Ivory Coast. In Morocco he played almost every game of the run to bronze, and the semi-final against the hosts went to penalties. “Penalties for me are 50/50, and we're just unlucky that day,” he said.
Osayi-Samuel salary: what has been reported
No club has ever published his wages.
In Turkey the numbers came from the press. They did not match. A Spor, citing Fotomaç in May 2024, put his salary at 600,000 euros a year, with a proposed renewal worth one million euros a season. Two months later 90min Turkey, citing Sabah, reported that he was earning 1.8 million euros a year and wanted 2.5 million.
That renewal never happened.
His contract ran out and he joined newly promoted Birmingham City on a three-year deal on 4 July 2025. “I missed home, and I felt I had goals to achieve back home in the UK,” he explained.
Birmingham have not disclosed his pay.
The salary-tracking site SalarySport estimates it at £35,000 a week, or about £1.82 million a year, with the deal running to June 2028. It is a model, not a payslip.
Net worth and family
There is no serious, sourced estimate of his net worth, and we will not invent one.
On family he shares little. His mother, Mrs Oredola Samuel, spoke in Benin City in July 2025 at the office of the Edo State Sports Commission chairman, ahead of the final of his under-13 youth tournament. Daily Trust carried her story of the night she threw his ball away after he came home late, and his reply: “Mum, you just threw away my future.”
His father, identified as Mr Osayi, spoke to Premium Times in Abidjan during AFCON 2023. Of a partner or children, nothing is public.
The tournament matters to him. “I want to keep going every year, make it bigger and take some scouts with me as well,” he said.
Our view
At 28, Osayi-Samuel is in a busy spell. He made 27 Championship appearances in his first season at St Andrew's, has started 2026/27 among the league's leading tacklers, and was named in Eric Chelle's latest squad despite Ola Aina competing for the same shirt.
On the money, the honest answer is that his pay probably sits somewhere inside the range of those Turkish reports and the Birmingham estimate, and nobody outside the club knows the exact figure, which puts him in a different category from Eagles whose wages are better documented, such as Ola Aina or Moses Simon.
On Okija, his parents and Nigeria, though, his own word is the best source there is.
This article was most recently revised and updated 17 seconds ago
