FOREIGN ACCENTS SYNDROME.

Oh God! I've had enough. It's like all these On-Air Personalities now have an accent initiation rite of passage when they start becoming popular. How fake and superficial can they be with their artificially imposed accents? It's becoming a consensus for all of them and is very boring these days. They pitch of their voices threatens to make my eardrums bleed out. Biko we know you're Nigerians, we don't expect you to go all world language on us... Don't make us struggle to understand and relate  with the media.

Recently, OAP Freeze of Cool F.M blasted his fellow OAPs and claimed that most Nigerian celebrities are suffering from the 'Foreign Accents Syndrome'. He said once they bet a visa to Dubai and Malaysia, they automatically fall ill with this sickness. The symptoms include the slurring and exaggeration of the letter "R", non patterned switch or combination of both the American and British accents.

Charles Novia, in 2013 said:

Listening to some Nigerian radio stations can either leave one permanently befuddled or just plain angry all the time. The latter is what happens to me mostly, so I stopped listening to most radio stations for some time. The television stations are not any better. The cause of one’s linear anguish is not hard to find. Confusing accents of the presenters! Yes, one cannot really tell if the presenters on radio and television [in Nigeria these days] are from Miami, Manchester or Mushin or if they are just a bunch of clueless upstarts mouthing words which seem to make them happy but leaves the listener with a terrible ‘earache’.

Then recently, almost every Presenter came on air sounding like poor imitations of Hollywood Black Gangsters or rap artistes. These days, you just have to strain your ears to hear anything they say on air. Words like ‘alright’ has given way to ‘aight!’ and so many examples. It’s not so much the fake accents that pisses me off but the lack of a true identity by these presenters! Some are confused and don’t even know if the accent they speak with are American or British or just a horrible cacophony of both. All these ‘gonna, wanna, burra, berra’ Presenters! Una nor go kill person.

It’s sad that many Nigerians have carried the mentality of our forefathers that the best of products, come from the overseas and netherlands. This has translated into so many facets of our society to the point where instead of a symbiotic fusion of our cultures with the foreign, we now have a confused sense of cultural identity.Some of the products of this confused sense of identity is the fact that we would rather hire foreigners to handle high budget contracts than graduates of our own training, prefer to answer to a foreign boss, and more commonly, the fake accents we hear from our media and celebrities.

As much as we do not want to admit it many of our on air personalities and celebrities tend to speak with an intonation reeking of foreign affiliations (the very moment you hit stardom/wealth/popularity, one of the first things to change is the accent). Let’s admitit, even when we speak to persons of renown and high social standing, we tend to add the extra slur, and roll our tongues to sound more refined.The media is largely responsible for this scourge. A lot them favouring those who by virtue of birth, or acting prowess, have a foreign accents. For some weird reason you are considered more hip and socially pleasant if you have a foreign accent.

It’s really ironic how one should discard his/her Nigerian accent to be given an opportunity to speak to Nigerians.The human mind is devoid of language and only seeks to identify with honesty irrespective of tribe or tongue. The very moment you sound fake you lose a bond with your audience, and have to rely on hype, not actual talent to maintain relevance.It’s high time the media and Nigerians as a whole stop glorifying the fake/foreign accents that plague the entertainment industry. Among the many colonial burdens we need to drop and discard, this is one of them. It is so bad that many media houses don’t consider you because they feel you don’t sound british or American enough to stand in front of a camera/mic (check out most radio and TV presenters)

Part culled from the Internet.