"I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit new African surroundings." - Chinua Achebe, Nigerian Novelist & Poet

Fully aware of the concept of social linguistics, Achebe explains here that language is living thus it always adapts to suit the culture of the people whom it serves. This is in response to people who feel Nigerians (and other Anglophone Africans) should write the IELTS/TOEFL because our accent is different from English speakers in the UK.

Breaking news. We are actually supposed to sound different because our roots differ. It is the same reason the English speakers in Jamaica, Barbados, Bahamas, Malta, (and other countries on the UK Home Office list) all sound different. English speakers in Scotland and England don't even sound the same, and this is still within the UK.

We are different. However, if the ultimate goal of language is communication and you can understand clearly what a Nigerian (or Anglophone African) says, writes, or sings (as we have seen in the growth of Afrobeat globally)…then why exactly are we having this argument? 

Over 65,000 signatures now. Let us continue to share and make our voices heard - https://www.change.org/p/dear-uk-home-office-stop-asking-nigerians-to-write-english-proficiency-tests-reformieltspolicy-now