Evangelist Abraham Olorunnimilo Ajao is a different kind of proprietor of a school. Where most of his colleagues overbill parents and guardians for everything from tuition to uniforms and extra curricular activities, the septuagenarian does nothing of such. Instead, for seven years since 2017, he has admitted indigent students to Cornerstone Charity Mission School, CCMS, Papalanto, Ewekoro Local Government, a remote area in Ogun State without asking for a kobo from their parents.
At first, people didn’t believe it. They thought it was a
lie, especially considering that no other educational centre had any such
programme. But then, news got around and then the rush began. A widow with two
kids had tried to enroll them in tuition-paying schools. No luck. No fees, no
school, they told her. Then she tried CCMS. Her kids were promptly admitted,
thanks to the magnanimity of the proprietor of the school Evangelist Ajao.
Hard to believe, not so? But it’s true. And the increasing
number of students on admission is proof enough. Unable to pay the inordinately
high tuition fees in schools, especially those run by big time churches,
penurious parents had no where else to go but to proprietors like Ajao willing
to take up their wards under their care for literally nothing.
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| Evangelist Ajao and Pastor Ademoyegun |
It is not that the proprietor himself is a moneybag. No! His
motivation stems from what he passed through in his younger years. By his own
account, he was a brilliant student but didn’t go past Standard 6 because both
parents died pretty early.
“I was not yet 10
when they died,” Ajao revealed. So, he dropped out of school. It was galling
but as an orphan there was little or nothing to reverse the card fate had dealt
him early in life.
Left on their own, there are thousands and thousands of
school-age kids denied such opportunities in many communities in Nigeria today.
Think of the Almajiris in northern Nigeria, their equivalent hawking water,
confectioneries in highways and streets or as domestic servants in the southern
part of the country whose fate had already been sealed through no fault of
theirs. If fate was unkind to Ajao, he apparently didn’t want it to be so for
kids roaming the streets without any form of education. He actually wanted to
further his education but was robbed of that.
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| Evangelist Abraham Olorunnimilo Ajao and the press |
So, Cornerstone
Charity Mission School is meant to bridge that gap for school-age students
whose parents can’t afford the fees and sundry levies Shylock proprietors now
demand.
Now, there are about 150 students at CCMS though the
classrooms might not be your model for an ideal school. There’s a shortage of
teachers, chairs and tables. There’s no functional laboratory to speak of. When
the Ogun State Education Board paid a visit sometime back, they thought of
shutting down the school but had a change of mind when they discovered it was a
tuition-free institution.
Of course, there is so much a charity organisation can do or achieve however well funded. And that is precisely what the administrators of CCMS need at this moment.
“We are appealing to the government, corporate bodies, NGOs
and private individuals to support us anyway they can,” Evangelist Ajao pleaded.
Also making the appeal is Pastor Zacchaeus Ademoyegun the
head teacher of CCMS, while speaking with the press. He has not been paid any
salary for months and it’s not easy as a family man. But his joy is having the
students come to school and be taught despite the challenges. “It’s not easy to
work and not be paid at the end of the month,” Ademoyegun says, but concedes
that “we are working for God because all these children are the children of
God.”
According to him, founding members of the ministry and, by extension, the teachers do not receive salaries except two other teachers who are paid promptly, “according to our capacity.”
That capacity, without doubt, can double or even quadruple,
it goes without saying, if members of the public come to the aid of the
magnanimous proprietor whose dream is to keep the young ones educated up to a
certain standard, some notches higher than his own Standard 6 after losing both
parents.
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