TUESDAY TALKS WITH GBEMI: This Accent thing, Na By Force????

THIS ACCENT THING, NA BY FORCE?
Back then in secondary school, we had this subject called “Elocution” where external teachers come in to teach us how to speak in the “right diction”. It was educating and mostly entertaining to hear Nigerians who are not bred abroad trying to teach you how to speak right and twist your tongue to a particular accent. Then in school it was made compulsory we speak in the right diction to the extent that our normal greetings to teachers changed. Even with all the wahala our principal did, most of us still maintained our normal accent. I can remember vividly then that my Economics teacher told us in class that most of us that are refusing to adopt to speaking in the right diction will be the ones who will eventually get to the university and change our names from Funke to Mirabel. His predictions partially came true. Imagine me getting to the university and meeting people trying to twist tongues to speak the American accent. I am not against it, in fact I really admire people who have the American or British accent but what I cannot seem to understand is why some people pretend by all means do so. While I am not against people trying to develop themselves, I am just saying why force yourself to speak like the westerners when obviously this is Nigeria and we have different tribes and I think the universal language in this country should be the “English language” in our Nigerian accent. Or better yet “Pidgin” English is there for us all. Brother why travel to China and come back to Nigeria with a British or American accent? And sister please stop twisting and changing your accent while talking to bros on the phone.
In summary, what I am trying to say is that we should all embrace our accent, be real and stop trying hard to be what we are not. Only then can we improve on ourselves and become better.