Prominent Ghanaian personalities defying stammering

The stigma that comes with stuttering or stammering affects many and as part of efforts to fight against this, October 22 was designated International Stuttering Awareness Day in 1998.

The day is intended to raise public awareness of the millions of people – one percent of the world's population – who have the speech disorder of stuttering. Stammering is a neurological condition which makes it physically hard to speak.

Someone who stammers will repeat, prolong or get stuck on sounds or words. There might also be signs of visible tension as the person struggles to get the word out.

Regardless of this difficulty, many Ghanaians have fought through the stigma and mockery and are even more verbal today, in their various spheres.

www.ghanaweb.com joins the world to mark the day and create awareness.

Let’s take a look at a few of these personalities:

Kojo Oppong Nkrumah



He is now the Minister of Information, yes but it took him the guts to come to terms with his speech impairment, work on his dreams and get the world to hear him. Today, he is on almost every platform, speaking for government.

But, let’s go back a little in history and talk about how Mr. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah had to prove to the world that stammering is not a defect that should limit anyone.

Mr. Oppong Nkrumah was successor to then Joy FM morning show Host, Komla Dumor when he decided to move on and pursue higher dreams. In 2007, he told Joy FM how he worked towards his dreams, regardless of his difficulty with fluency in speaking at the time.

He said that he used to stammer so badly that his tongue could hardly handle any consonants, especially the letter 'K' so any word that began with 'K' literally dropped out of his mouth with such difficulty. He could not even bring himself up to tell a taxi driver that he needed a ride to Kaneshie because of the letter K in the word.

However, after Junior Secondary School, Kojo challenged himself to release his tongue.

“On few occasions I have had words stuck up in my tongue which I have released with some effort", he said in the interview.

Today, he speaks relatively smoothly, he loves to talk and also likes to set standards.

Mutombo Da Poet



It’s a ‘household’ name when it comes to spoken word poetry in Ghana. He began his venture in 2006 when he released his first video.

Titled ‘I Speak’, the talented poet spoke about his story as a child who stammered and everything he had to go through because of that.

“Sometimes there’s a hitch, syllables collide with phonetics, nouns and verbs disarrayed, I start to twitch, speech is bundled up in my brain but voice can’t connect it….there should be a link up, the result; I stammer. My mum tried everything within her means to have smooth conversations with me.

I never argued with friends, they were always right. Those were the moments when I was sidelined because I made conversations drag.

Talk couldn’t flow without tap dancing but if it failed after a few tries, I would abort. I couldn’t say hello without breaking it into bits. Dude, you are tall, dark and sexy but your talk is shitty. Confidence bruised and that made disability escalate,” parts of the poetry said.

But he overcame his fears through the discovery and pursuit of his passion; spoken word.

“I fought this the hard way, it wasn’t through religious deliverance or therapy, it was through performing spoken arts poetry,”, he said.

As part of the awareness to stop stigmatization and stereotyping, he took to social media today to say this.



Ace Ankomah

Another personality, who has proven that a speech defect shouldn’t stop anyone or be a subject of mockery is Private Legal Practitioner, Ace Ankomah.

He was born with a stutter but today, is a public voice for society, and a private legal advantage in the courtroom.

Ace Ankomah was born to an engineer father who worked with the Ghana Railways Corporation and a stay-home mum.

The distinguished lawyer, during the personality profile on Joynews explained how an Indian, Krishna, helped him overcome his stuttering.

Krishna helped him out in the 1970s, teaching Ace breathing exercises and slowing down the linguistic road whenever he got to the junction that required he pronounce ‘J’ or ‘Y’.

To date, he says he sometimes stutters when he is nervous or angry.

Stonebwoy



Ghanaian Afropop, dancehall and raggae artiste, Livingstone Etse Satekla, popularly called Stonebwoy is making it big in his music career despite his occasional struggle with stuttering.

Stonebwoy is the CEO of Burniton Music Group and has won several awards both on the international and local fronts. He won the Best International Act: Africa category at the 2015 BET Awards and Artist of the Year at the 2015 Ghana Music Awards.

King of reggae and dancehall artists in Africa will be a suitable title for Stonebwoy who also has some background in acting having appeared in the movie ‘My name is Ramadan’.

Having earned such feats, it is only normal for the musician to honor several interviews, locally and internationally. His stuttering however hasn’t stopped him from going all out to do what he does and the world is recognizing him for that.

Anthony Owura-Akuaku (Nenebi)



Another Poet and songwriter who didn’t allow his speech impairment to deter him from chasing his dreams.

Nenebi revealed he has a speech impairment but developed a strategy to disguise it.

On Joy FM’s entertainment show, Rythms A-Z in 2016, he revealed, “I stammer a little so I close my eyes and pretend I am thinking to hide the fact that I am stammering.