I Hear You But I Can NOT Listen...!

My capability for unearthing foolery and mayhem even in the midst of the most civil and serious situations is surprising to some…as is my consistent search for fodder to feed my active imagination. The Nigerian Law School, which I am currently enrolled in, is the perfect place for such fodder as it is a veritable treasure chest of laughs. When I started a few months ago, there were only ‘foreign' students at the school. By foreign, I refer to students who have obtained a degree in any jurisdiction besides Nigeria. I suspect that the second, equally important, requirement to undertake the course as a ‘foreign’ student is the ability to speak in a contrived accent. The more unfortunate sounding the better, I believe. Or how else do we explain the questionable accents prevalent in this place?! And you know it can not be easy to maintain! We’re talking saliva collating, tongue stressing, cheek chewing accents that often do more to expose the little village in Eastern Nigeria from whence the speaker doth commeth rather than a world-class education at an accredited UK university. Amazingly, we never have any Ghanaian, Romanian or Malaysian accents in the proliferation of English and American ones, despite the fact that the registration book clearly shows substantial figures from universities kilometres away from the Great Britain and American shores. Epic Fail surely?

But we digress.

Now, the second half of the course has begun, and a host of even more questionable characters have invaded the campus. The ‘real’ Nigerian students are upon us. By real, I mean students who studied within the porous ports of the Nigerian territory. As I leave the first class of the new term, I am compelled to quietly mutter to myself “…the idiots outnumber us”. By this I do not suggest the ‘real’ Nigerians are in any way less intelligent, if anything the opposite appears to be the case. However there exists among their number too many ‘students’ who appear unable to conjugate tenses, use conjunctions or pronounce basic English words, to ignore. Each day in class is an escalated fun-fest. Certainly not what you would typically label a class of ambitious potential lawyers and intelligent lecturers.

Sometimes I want to blame the lecturers for the students' poor speech, I have heard a teacher tell the class to “…haxx de clent ebat hah she”, in English she is saying "…ask the client about how she…" (And yes, I am well aware that that sentence makes little sense even in English). Where a teacher speaks like this it is little wonder that a student, stands up in his ill-fitting jacket, stretches forth his dangling limbs to collect the microphone, expands his jaw and belches out a nonsensical sentence like this; “…woo wee nah ichoo de rit of mah-dah-mos?” (in English ”…who will now issue the Writ of Mandamus?”).

I intend to make a point of noting the horrendous errors in each class and detailing them here…for the education of the masses yet unborn of couse *ahem*. Seriously, the manner of speech in the classes is most distracting. I spend my classes giggling into my books, simultaneously praying that the teacher does not look my way and “Has”, “Haxxe” or perhaps even “Azz” me a question.

I better focus now!