“I was struggling to speak”: Nigerians who stutter on navigating the education system

Oyo, Nigeria (Minority Africa) — In February 2024, Abdulqudus Jimoh (27), who had just gained direct entry into the 200-level archaeology department at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, was to give a presentation tied to his grades in data collection and handling in archaeology. 

He had to prepare for two things. In addition to what he and the other students learned during the practical, he had to repeatedly practise how he would speak and not stammer when it was his turn to present. 

“I was struggling to speak. I understood what I wanted to say but couldn’t get it out. Sincerely, I felt pain, discouraged, disappointed, and embarrassed,” he says, recounting how his presentation went.

That was not the first time Jimoh’s speech difficulty would let him down academically; he had been mocked throughout his Higher Diploma programme at the same university.  Before getting admitted for an undergraduate degree, he was scared to put his heart back into the ring, he tells Minority Africa.

“Stammering is not only impeding my studies; it is halting my leadership roles as a student because I know I have all the leadership qualities except this,” he says. 

Unlike other students who can communicate easily, Jimoh says when he forces a word from his mouth, he feels a sharp and searing pain in his chest. So, he doesn’t talk, ask, or answer questions in class, which he feels strongly affects his academic life.

While stammering isn’t an issue for him with some of his coursemates and close friends, he adds that they don’t always let him finish or want to pay attention to him when he talks, making group projects and collaboration difficult for him.

Facing challenges with presentation is also something Omosalewa Akanbi-Neander experienced. “I prefer exams to come in written form,” he says. “Every exam done in oral or presentation format, I falter. My project defence did not go as I wished because I stammered. I might know 80% of what I want to discuss, but I can only share 40% because I stammer.”

Until getting to King’s College in Lagos, Akanbi-Neander never envisioned that his speech difficulty would become pressing. 

“I can’t remember at what point my stammering became an issue,” he says. “But getting to secondary school, if I wanted to get down from a bus stop on my way to and from school, I would have started practising how I would say it three bus stops before.” Even though he tried, he missed his bus stop so many times.

Akanbi-Neander initially wanted to study law and become a lawyer like his father, but he had to accept that a career as a lawyer would be challenging. 

 “A stammerer may find it challenging to defend his client speaking in the courtroom. I had to tweak my ambition, he says. 

Still, studying Political Science between 2007 and 2011 at Redeemer’s University in Ede, Osun State, was equally challenging.

In separate interviews, Jimoh and Akanbi-Neander admitted that stammering comes with a sense of grief as students because the country’s educational system has no space for anyone who will take at least two minutes more to say a word than their contemporaries.

They are among over 600,000 adults in Nigeria who experience some level of difficulty, including rapid eye blinks, tremors of the lips or jaw, facial tics, head jerks, and clenched fists when speaking. Despite being aware they exhibit these traits, people with speech difficulty have little or no control over these involuntary actions.

Like thousands of others, the duo’s speech difficulty worsens when they are exhausted, tired, or stressed out—physical conditions that are impossible not to happen in higher institutions. They struggle with their academic lives almost daily because of the emphasis on speech and peer-to-peer interaction. While they like to interact as they explain to Minority Africa, they can’t keep up with oral interactions and struggle to make a successful presentation, a critical evaluation model in their institutions.

Most courses have at least a group work or personal assignment in a semester that requires presentation and public speaking and can make up between 10-30 per cent of their grade.

The problems people with speech difficulty face do not only reoccur at the secondary or undergraduate level; they are also a pressing challenge at the postgraduate level, as stammering does not only affect students while making presentations; reading can become impossible regardless of one’s level of education.

Babajide Ajayi (37) narrates to Minority Africa that during a class on managerial economics, while taking his master’s degree in business administration, the lecturer asked them to read a note aloud one after the other before he explained the lesson’s content.

“On a regular day, I can read smoothly, but it becomes an issue when I realise I stammer,” he says. “As a stammerer, I find it difficult to enunciate words that begin with consonants. I was relearning how to pronounce the first word, which was a consonant, when the professor concluded that I was dumb.”

Even though he had rehearsed before his turn, the lecturer assumed he couldn’t and decided to read Ajayi’s portion himself.

“There are barriers and stigma. Even when stammering has no physical imprint, most of us are ashamed, especially in the presence of strangers,” Akanbi-Neander adds. His time as an undergraduate was bittersweet. He came out as the second-best student in his class and believes he could have topped the class if he did not stammer.

He explains that instead of the Nigerian society absorbing stammerers and their speech difficulties, they associate it with non-intelligence, lies, or a bad habit from childhood.

“Some people even say that because we stammer, we are lying. So there is a cultural connotation to stammering that affects us as students,” he says.

As Jimoh returns to Ahmadu Bello University, getting used to speaking at a slow pace has worked well for him. “I have accepted my fate, so I don’t speak too fast. My slow speech has given me enough respite to blend into the system. There is a difference between speaking slowly and stammering.”

Akanbi-Neander now runs his own business after endlessly searching for a job. He attributes the failure partly to stammering because it limited his choices and how prospective employers rate him and his presentations. He no longer cares what people say and has been speaking at his own pace, even when people find his words uninteresting.

“For me, I stammer it out. I don’t mind and I try to pass my message,” he says. “I have been confident and I ensure that I am knowledgeable beyond average. When people know I have something upstairs, they will be eager to listen to me even if it takes longer than others.” 

He doesn’t overthink it; he takes care of every other part of his life except the only one he certainly can’t control—stammering—which is hereditary, as it is with all the sources that Minority Africa interviewed.

While Ajayi’s educational pursuits have revolved around speech and vocals (he obtained a bachelor’s degree in mass communication, majoring in advertising and has also explored public relations, business administration, accounting, and music), just like Akanbi-Neander and Jimoh, he has found personalised ways to navigate his way around tertiary education.

“I have my challenges with presentation. When we were given group assignments, most of my classmates always saw me as a dullard. So, I had to distance myself from broadcasting or anything that has to do with much talking”.

Initially, studying mass communication felt like a punishment for Ajayi. His family wanted him to surmount his stammering. “My sponsors wanted me to go for mass communication, and I am happy I did,” he recounts.

Expectedly, many people think that his brain malfunctions when he speaks, but he closes the gaps via continued academic excellence and breaking new ground. “I remember trying to introduce myself to someone, and he dove off. I felt I should die.”

Stammering has become a motivation for him, helping him reach new heights in his career. He has become an interdisciplinary expert and won the MTN MUSON Music Scholars Programme, a rare achievement for anyone with speech difficulty.

Eunice Akinbode, a speech therapist pursuing her graduate study in speech therapy and audiology at the University of Ibadan, agrees that learning in a Nigerian university is tricky and thinks that it’s high time the country’s educational stakeholders considered the struggles of stammerers.

“From lecturers to colleagues, every pillar of tertiary education is supposed to accommodate stammerers and their speech difficulties as opposed to them finding adaptable ways on their own,” she says. “But we don’t have that here.”

Akinbode submits that living in denial of stammerers and parents of children with stammering deepens the problem. “When you were covering this story, many would have asked why you thought this was a big deal. Stammering is greatly overlooked.” While putting this piece together, Minority Africa spoke with fifteen students from across Nigeria who stammer. Ten of them see stammering as a personal woe and nothing too serious.

She says that the Nigerian system has made it impossible for lecturers to go out of their way to carry students along. “Even the seemingly regular students hardly have the chance to thrive; how about people with special needs such as stammering? There’s no support for student stammerers in tertiary institutions whatsoever.

“As speech therapists, what we do for stammerers is that we use some techniques, including pacing, speech moderation, and control breathing, to work on their speech output. It’s only permissible for us to work on their psychology. A real-time educational fix is pretty difficult to find.”

Despite the struggles of stammerers not being acknowledged, students who stammer have found functional ways on their own, and these ways are working for them. 

Edited by Banjoko Samuel and Uzoma Ihejirika.