SCRAP IELTS: Nigerians maintain their stand
Nigerians have maintained their stand for IELTS to be scrapped in their response to the UK Home refusal to put them(Nigerians) on the exemption list of countries who don’t write to IELTS.
Recall that the UK Home responded to over 33,000 Nigerians who signed a petition against them for IELTS to be reformed. In their petition they complained bitterly about the fee of the test, which currently stands between N80,000 and N90,000 which is far higher than Nigerian minimum wage and how the validity (2years) of the test was too short.
Many participants, who shared their opinion on twitter spaces, condemned what they described as the UK authorities’ adamancy to include Nigeria and other African countries on the list of its Majority English Speaking Country (MESC) and therefore described “IELTS as a simple way of UK Authorities to swindle the citizens who are not from Anglophonic countries of their monies.”
Many participants further argued that English Language being the ‘Lingua franca‘ adopted by Nigerian schools to teach in from kindergarten to tertiary level is a enough testimony that Nigerians can actually communicate both verbally and in written English.
Amidst the growing number of signees of the Policy Shapers’ petition in January 2022 the growing Twitter trends of #ReformIELTSPolicy #IELTS, #TOEFL, where most of them tagged the UK home office’s twitter handle, the UK Authorities replied the inquiry by the public campaign organization.
Where part of it reads:
“We rely on the countries where half of the citizens speaks English as their major language
“We rely on publicly available evidence such as official censuses to make this determination along with other academic sources.
“We may also consult the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office where additional evidence is required. Currently, based on the information available to us, Nigeria does not meet the requirement.
“This list is periodically reviewed and updated, and new countries are added if they are found to meet the requirements.
Responding to the UK Home on behalf of other Nigerians, The founder of Policy Shapers and a champion of the #ReformIELTSPolicy campaign, Mr. Wikina said the UK home office was not specific in what kind of public evidence they particularly rely on to verify that more than 51 per cent of Nigerians do not speak English Language.
Furthermore Mr. Wakina stressed that: “Public evidences are very broad, and there are a lot of public evidence on why Nigerians should be on that list.” In his words: To back up my claim Nigeria has always made the top 28 countries for six consecutive years in the English Proficiency Index released annually by Education First, a Sweden-based international education company that specializes in language training. Hence we actually deserve to be on the list”. He however hinted that Policy Shapers are already working on a policy brief to be presented to the UK Authorities.
