Nigerians fight over which ethnic group has the sexiest accent

Lagos – Last week in Lagos a fight broke out between young Nigerians of different ethnicities.

Policemen deployed to contain the fracas - which could have snowballed into a full-blown riot - were perplexed to discover that the bone of contention was each ethnic group’s accent.

When on the 17^th of August, 2011 CNN published a report claiming that the Nigerian accent is the 5th sexiest accent in the world, Nigerians at home and abroad changed their phone voicemail messages, using their ‘true’ accents to record new ones.

Also, Nigerians far and wide began to post the story to their Facebook pages and to spread it on twitter, happy to finally be redeemed of their inability to properly pronounce English words.

What started as a national celebration brought on by an anonymous foreign journalist’s opinion was however a ticking time-bomb.

It was only a matter of time before Nigerians would start to ask the inevitable question: ‘Which of the Nigerian accents exactly?’

This mother of all questions was asked at a popular beer parlour in the Ajegunle area of Lagos, and thus was the matter broached and the quarrels ignited.

Yoruba’s at the beer parlour were quick to point out that the CNN journalist had made mention of the “oh’s” and “eh’s” of the Nigerian accent. This, for them, was clear indication that it was the Yoruba accent the writer was referring to, oh.

A group of Easterners present were irked by the audacity of the Yorubas and further infuriated when the Yoruba’s lumped them all together by calling them Igbos.

It did not take long for what started off as a heated, howbeit pointless debate to turn into a full scale fight, and it did not help matters that when the police arrived, the first officers on the scene were all of Hausa Fulani descent.

Interestingly, the beer parlour which was the scene of the street fight is named “One Nation” and is run by a Ghanaian Lady who said of her warring customers: “Charley, don’t mind them, eh.”

- Alias X