“The words did not come out”: Nigerians who stutter navigate work in ‘speech centric’ professions

Image Description: A close-up of a person’s lips slightly parted as if speaking. From the mouth, fragmented blue sound waves float outward like scattered shards of glass.

In March 2020, the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) was recruiting. An advertisement went out encouraging all members of the public to apply. One exception to this invitation was people who stutter. Stutterers topped a list of ‘barred applicants’ otherwise composed of physical conditions such as knock knees, flat feet, and cross-eyes. 

Equating stuttering with inadequacy isn’t uncommon. This is exactly what has put Kosi Okorie* (29) at what he calls “a point of rejection.”

One week after Okorie started his new role as a logistics officer for a plastics company in Onitsha, Anambra State, his line manager invited him for a private chat. 

“He said the main boss does not like the way I used to speak,” Okorie says. 

Okorie has a noticeable stammer and often repeats words more than once. In his work, he spends most of his time on the phone with transporters, agents, and customers. He never thought his stammer would be a problem for this job, having been a successful salesboy before applying. But after what the company manager said, Okorie is now looking for ways to reduce his stutter while holding on to the assurance his line manager has given him.

“My [line manager] said what they just want is for me to do the work very well,” he says. “I know he will use the way I use to speak to judge me. I know what I’m doing, just that at times I find it hard to communicate.”

Less than 1% of Nigerians, approximately 900,000, speak with a stutter. Although the cause of stuttering is unknown, it is widely agreed to be a neurological issue. Scientists theorise that children develop a stutter when a cognitive conflict activates the brain’s Behavioural Inhibition System (BIS). A cognitive conflict occurs when the brain encounters a problem in making a decision. For instance, a linguistic cognitive conflict can happen when a person wants to say the word pap but is simultaneously thinking of closely related words such as pat and pad. This activates the BIS, which pauses otherwise automatic processes like speaking, so the brain can be extra cautious in selecting the correct word.  However, this pause can cause anxiety and hypervigilance, making it harder to speak smoothly.

People who stutter are often disadvantaged in social settings such as schools, workplaces, and religious institutions, where their speech differences aren’t accommodated. They are usually bullied, sidelined, or faulted for the way they speak, and this can deter them from pursuing opportunities, especially in speech-centric careers. This was Juliana Imam’s (33) story until she decided that her stutter mattered less than her desire to make an impact. 

“What I discovered was that if you’re knowledgeable about something, who would care that you stammer? What they want is a solution to their problem,” she says. “So for me, immediately, I discovered that I just told myself, if people don’t care about how I speak, what they want is a solution to the problem, then I should equip myself to be a solution provider, so that the way I speak will not be so that’s how I started studying a lot.”

Imam is an intellectual property and entertainment lawyer who consults for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). She is also the founder of Stammer Foundation, which she has run for six years. When asked why she chose to study Law—a field known for lovers of talk—Imam says:

“I asked my mom to write three courses that I could study. So she wrote Law, Mass Communication and Theatre Arts. And I got into Law.”

Imam’s mother also has a stutter, but it didn’t stop her from being a teacher for 35 years, so stuttering wasn’t something that held back the boisterous daughter she had at home. In public, though, Imam wasn’t as boisterous. She was incredibly shy except when she sang. She hardly spoke throughout her five years studying Law at the University of Abuja, or during Law School. The goal was to make herself invisible and avoid feeling embarrassed by her stutter, because the memory of the first time she couldn’t speak on demand was still heavy.

“I was probably around four or five or six at most, and they had this Children’s Day programme, and they asked all the children to line up because they had taught. When it was my turn to speak, the words did not come out,” she says.  “And I remember going to the back of the church, lying down on a wooden bench, and crying. It just made me to be more reserved.  I would talk at home, but when I [went] out, I would speak to just those I was comfortable with because of the stammer. Because of that, I didn’t talk much in secondary school or [at]  university. There are actually people [from] my class at university who, when I meet them, don’t recognise me because I didn’t talk while I was in school. Same with law school.” 

Imam kept trying to find a place within the legal profession that would keep her invisible, speech-wise, but life would take her elsewhere. After a singing contract went wrong due to intellectual property (IP) issues, Imam started thinking about how susceptible entertainers were to IP conflicts and abuses due to poor knowledge. So, she pursued a Master’s degree in Entertainment Law at Nassarawa State University, Lafia, and started the Juliana Imam Intellectual Property and Creative Consult in 2017. Her work initially focused on contracts rather than courtroom advocacy. However, her passion for IP made her want to do more, and that’s when speaking became the central to her career. 

That same year, she started hosting online interviews and sessions on intellectual property and entertainment:

“The more I talked professionally, the more people saw me as an authority in that space. They started inviting me for physical programs, inviting me to radio stations, TV stations, and I started talking. I would stammer, but I would still continue talking.”

Imam says speaking slowly, being deliberate about her words, and creating speaking opportunities helped her control her stutter in these situations, though it didn’t always go smoothly. By 2020, things took a more intense turn when she was invited to speak at a webinar about comedy and intellectual property.

“I remember that it was a tug of war,” she says. “What saved me was that my video was not on. I was battling to speak, but what I discovered was that if you’re knowledgeable about something, people won’t care that you stammer, what they want is a solution to their problem.”

After this webinar, Imam received so many requests for mentorships that she started an academy as part of her intellectual property consult—the Juliana Imam Intellectual Property and Creative Consult Academy (JIIPCC Academy). Like her mother, she became a teacher. The academy has trained over 1,500 professionals across ten African countries. The impact of her teaching was so profound that it became the key recommendation for her current role at WIPO. Now, she spends much of her time on United Nations panels and other speaking engagements.

Dr Onyekachi Oko (27), a general practitioner in Lagos, feels the same way as Imam about the relationship between expertise and speaking. Oko has stammered for as long as he can remember, and consonant sounds are a regular menace. As a doctor, much of his job involves speaking with patients and assessing their complaints before providing care and counseling. While he has learnt to pre-inform people about his stutter so he can feel calmer, his confidence in his abilities helps him set his speech aside. 

“At a point in my life, I was like, this fear I have of speaking doesn’t make sense; I’m actually better than a lot of people who talk without stammering, so what is there?” he says. “Even today, I’ve stammered [with] patients. If I stammer, they will stay there and listen because they need my help.”

Oko hasn’t always been this confident. He grew up timid because he was often mocked by peers and even people younger than him. Like Imam , he found solace in singing, as he never stutters when he sings. To manage his stutter, he has learnt, among other things, to substitute words that stump him with synonyms— but no technique has completely eliminated the condition. 

Medical school was particularly difficult for him because around 60% of grades were determined by oral examinations—a nightmare if you stutter. During his second Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) examinations, it was especially hard.

“Stuttering made me feel bad because they [examiners] may have felt like I didn’t know the answer but I did,” he says. “At some point, some of the examiners asked me to calm down because I have to talk or I won’t pass. And I shouldn’t think they’ll pity me because I’m stammering.”

Like many people who stutter, Oko never asks for pity. Still, he appreciates simple accommodations, such as a little extra time to speak, patient listening without finishing his sentences, and interactions that don’t make his stutter the center of focus. In summary, tact and kindness.

Ife Bello*, who works in communication, realized how far kindness goes when she interned at a media organization. Once, she was asked to co-host a live TV show. Since co-hosts didn’t have to say much and she had been gaining control over her stutter, she was comfortable enough to accept. Unfortunately, something came up and the main host had to leave the studio briefly. All the cameras were on Ife. The words froze in her throat.

“I just went mute on air,” she says. “I still remember this day as though it happened recently. It was 2020, that’s five years ago. I was so self-conscious [about] how much effort speaking takes. The response I got was not condescending. He [the host] was not shocked; he just did not show any disapproval, and [afterwards], everybody had their own story of coming on air or being live and freezing.”

Even though this made Bello feel better, she still prefers to write rather than speak professionally, but she’s challenging herself to come out of this shell.

Juliana Imam vouches for speaking as an effective means of gaining better control of a stutter. In 2018, she founded Stammer TV, which later became the Stammer Foundation. The vision was to have a television station where people who stutter could anchor regular entertainment shows like cooking or news analysis programmes. This, she believed, would help them become more confident while also training the public to be more accommodating of speech differences.

The station never aired, but the Stammer Foundation now offers support and monthly webinars on self-help techniques, communication, and navigating employment challenges for people who stutter. Okorie joined the Stammer Foundation for this reason and is actively looking forward to the sessions. 

However, living with a stutter also means accepting that you may never be able to control it into invisibility. Some people have more severe forms , which cause physical tremors and stoppages in airflow, making the journey to confidence and social acceptance more difficult to navigate. 

This is Idayat Jinadu’s (24) major concern when she says, “Overall, stuttering controls me.” Jinadu works as a brand strategist and is trying to break into content creation to help grow her personal brand. But the world of social media demands that you speak up—and speak fast—to hold people’s attention.

“As a person who stutters, it’s just so hard to create short videos,” she says. “I recorded a video of one minute for one hour and thirty minutes, and I still could not post it. It was just so hard. Even with words that are very simple, things that someone else will do so easily. I know what I want to say but I can’t say it because of the disability.”

Jinadu has tried several self-help techniques and finds them frustrating because, as she puts it, “nothing works.” Although she continues to put herself out there by writing about her work and creating longer-form content such as podcasts, Jinadu believes her stutter will stand in the way of her dream of becoming a lecturer.  

“I don’t like deceiving myself but whenever I tell people they say it doesn’t matter as a lecturer, but they are not the ones living my life. I’ve attempted teaching before and I could barely get my words out.”

She feels patronized when people who don’t stutter offer words of encouragement such as   “speak slowly” or  “what you have to say has value.” For her, it feels like making her stutter a bull’s eye for others to perform their accommodation upon. True accommodation, she insists, is more tactful.

While stuttering undeniably creates professional barriers—in education, interviews, or cases like Okorie’s,  where bias threatens employment— communities such as the Stammer Foundation hope to help people overcome these barriers. Currently, the foundation has over 600 members across professional fields such as Law, Broadcast Media, and Speech Therapy. Their goal is to change the narrative about stuttering and support people who stutter as they navigate the world.

*Names have been changed to protect anonymity

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Edited/Reviewed by PK Cross, Caleb Okereke, Awom Kenneth and Uzoma Ihejirika.

Illustrated by Rex Opara.