A swimming coach in Nigeria provides inspiration and life lessons to disabled people

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — About 20 children in shorts and vests gather at a swimming pool on a sweltering afternoon in Nigeria's economic hub of Lagos. A coach holds the hand of a boy who is blind as he demonstrates swimming motions and guides him through the pool while others take note.

It was one of the sessions with students of the Pacelli School for the Blind and Partially Sighted, where Emeka Chuks Nnadi, the swimming coach, uses his Swim in 1 Day, or SID, nonprofit to teach swimming to disabled children.

In a country where hundreds drown every year, often because of boat mishaps but sometimes as a result of domestic accidents, the initiative has so far taught at least 400 disabled people how to swim. It has also aided their personal development.

“It (has) helped me a lot, especially in class,” said 14-year-old Fikayo Adodo, one of Nnadi's trainees who is blind. “I am very confident now to speak with a crowd, with people. My brain is sharper, like very great."

The World Health Organization considers drowning as one of the leading causes of death through unintentional injury globally, with at least 300,000 people dying from drowning every year. The most at risk are young children.

Many of the deaths occur in African countries like Nigeria, with limited resources and training to avert such deaths.

In Nigeria — a country of more than 200 million people, 35 million of whom the government says are disabled — the challenge is far worse for disabled people who have less access to limited opportunities and resources in addition to societal stigma.

While the initiative is raising awareness among the children about drowning, it benefits wider society in different ways, Nnadi said, especially “if you want to have disabled people that are contributing to the economy and not just dependent on us as a society to take care of them.”

Nnadi recalled setting up the nonprofit after moving back to Nigeria from Spain in 2022 and seeing how disabled people are treated compared to others. It was a wide gap, he said, and thought that teaching them how to swim at a young age would be a great way to improve their lives.

“There is a thing in Africa where parents are ashamed of their (disabled) kids,” he said. “So (I am) trying to make people understand that your child that is blind could actually become a swimming superstar or a lawyer or doctor.”

“I find it rewarding (watching) them transform right under my eyes,” Nnadi said of the results of such lessons.

Watching them take their lessons, some struggle to stay calm in the water and stroke their way through it, but Nnadi and the two volunteers working with him patiently guide them through the water, often leaving them excited to quickly try again.

Some of them said that it gives them pleasure, while it is a lifesaving skill for some and it's therapy for others. Experts have also said that swimming can improve mental well-being, in addition to the physical benefits from exercising.

“Swimming (has) taught me to face my fears, it has (given) me boldness, it has given me courage, it has made me overcome my fears,” said 13-year-old Ikenna Goodluck, who is blind and among Nnadi’s trainees.

Ejiro Justina Obinwanne said that the initiative has helped her son Chinedu become more determined in life.

“He is selfless and determined to make something out of the lives of children that the world has written off in a lot of ways,” she said of Nnadi.

Swimming coach Emeka Chuks Nnadi teaches young, disabled students to swim as part of his Swim in 1 Day, or SID, nonprofit, in a pool at the Pacelli School for the Blind and Partially Sighted in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Swimming coach Emeka Chuks Nnadi teaches disabled students to swim as part of his Swim in 1 Day, or SID, nonprofit program at a pool on the campus of the Pacelli School for the Blind and Partially Sighted in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Swimming coach Emeka Chuks Nnadi teaches young, disabled students to swim as part of his Swim in 1 Day, or SID, nonprofit, in a pool at the Pacelli School for the Blind and Partially Sighted in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Students of the Pacelli School for the Blind and Partially Sighted wait for the start of their swimming lesson at their schools' pool by swimming coach Emeka Chuks Nnadi as part of his Swim in 1 Day, or SID, nonprofit, in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Swimming coach Emeka Chuks Nnadi teaches a disabled student to swim as part of his Swim in 1 Day, or SID, nonprofit, in a pool at the Pacelli School for the Blind and Partially Sighted in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)