Back in the past when the missionaries were at the helm of things in most schools in Nigeria, education was then considered a thing for all and it was because of this that many were educated in Nigeria today. This helped to bridge the gap between the very privileged few who were able to go to school and those whose fathers could not afford to pay school fees.
Just like the foreign missionaries, who really turned around the education sector to accommodate even the poor, many were of the belief that the new generation missionaries should at least emulate their predecessors. But to the surprise of many in their congregations, the school fees are such that are not affordable to their members, and in some cases the churches raise offering among their congregations to build the schools only for the pastors to complete the schools and deny them the chance of sending their children to such schools.
People of these church-owned schools are more expensive than other universities that are not affiliated to any church. We did some research into some supposed missionary tertiary institutions in Nigeria and the range of the amount an average student pays per session or semester. Our findings were interesting.
Winners’ Chapel’s Covenant University
It is regarded as one of the best universities in the country, built on expansive land somewhere along Idi-Iroko road, Ota, inside the premises of the headquarters of the Living Faith Church Mission or Winners’ Chapel as it’s called. Though the founder and leader of the church, Bishop David Oyedepo had at different time stated that he did not collect money from the church to erect the structure, many are of the opinion that the claims of the bishop may be far from the truth as he was not known to be doing any other work apart from the one he’s doing in the church. The school which was built with the assistance of people God sent to help the ministry, as most pastors claim, was supposed to help give quality education to children of every member of the church, but the case is that the church’s school ended up being one of the most expensive schools in the country, with school fees ranging from between N300,000 and N450,000, which makes it not a school for the child of an average member of the church.
