When I got admission into my University. Normally, there's always that excitement, coupled with what everyone said about the school being one of the best in the Northern Nigeria, and I was ready to start my new life as a university student. But after my first week on campus, I realized something, I felt like a complete stranger and It wasn’t because the school was bad. No, the school was beautiful, the campus was big, the weather was really cool, and the students were nice. But the problem was one spoke the locally. 
Back home in Jos, and even a few other universities I had visited, it was spoken everywhere, It made conversations really easy, like If a lecturer stressed you, you could turn to your coursemate and say, "Guy, wahala no too much?" If you were hungry, you could complain, "Omo, make we go buy food before hunger kpai me." Even if you didn’t know someone, just speaking the language you could make you friends in minutes. But in my University? It was either formal English or Hausa. Even the Students from different parts of the Country I met refused to interact with me, everyone acted too serious, like as if they were in a business meeting. I tried to blend in, but the more I tried the more I was out of place.
After lectures one Friday, I decided to visit a new masa spot recently opened which was close to my hostel. Personally, I had been avoiding it because I didn’t want to embarrass myself, but hunger was dealing with me that day. I got to the counter, saw that the woman serving it looked angry as if she had been fighting all day.
"Next person, what do you want?" she asked in a sharp voice.
Before I could stop myself, I said. "Aunty, abeg, give me 6 masa and put plenty soup, add better meat join. Hunger wan kee me." I didn’t even think about it. The words just came out. Immediately, someone behind me started laughing.
"Omo, you sabi! You be Lagos babe?"
I turned around. The guy talking was tall and dark, the kind of person who looked like he has seen life.
"Ah, I no be Lagos girl o. Na Jos I come from," I replied. "But I no fit suffer in silence abeg."
He laughed again. "Na true talk, People for here too serious. Chop food finish make we yarn small abeg"
That was how I met Abdul. He was from Kogi but had done his diploma in Benin before coming to my University. He told me he had been shocked too when he first came. Even the Igbo and Yoruba students here acted like they didn’t know how to speak locally.
We became friends ever since and he introduced me to Farida, a Kaduna girl who spoke it so well you would think she grew up in Warri. Then we met Bala, a Katsina guy who learned from NYSC corpers in his village. We usually hung out under a tree close to the school stadium, and that day we were talking about how different this school felt.
"This school na fine place, but e too cold both weather and people!" I said.
"Dem no too like to gist. Everybody just dey form serious," Abdul added.
"Abeg, make we break the silence small," Farida said, laughing.
So we did. We started greeting people and talking freely in public, and slowly, others joined in. Initially, some of them replied formally, but after a while, they switched. One Yoruba boy from Kano always told me, "You don corrupt me!" because he had started talking with us. We were in our usual masa joint, arguing about which state had the best jollof rice, when an older woman sitting nearby turned to us.
"Can you all speak properly?" she snapped.
I looked at my friends and smiled.
"Aunty, we dey speak properly. Na you no sabi understand."
Everybody bursted into laughter. 

That was the moment it dawned on me, no matter where my colleagues and the other students go on this campus, If you like, speak your big English, they will reply you in our local one, they didn't mind anymore. For me, it makes life easier, and as long as I am in this uni, I will speak it proudly.