COLONEL Dickson A. Itodo (retd.) is the Director of Liberty Square Academy and Presiding Bishop of Liberty Square Ministries with headquarters in Abuja. He served the Nigerian Army for 26 years before he retired in 2001. In this chat with Vanguard Learning in Abuja recently, the former Chief Pharmacist of the Nigerian Army speaks on why he got into the education sector, the challenges, and says those who are in the sector just to make profit will be disappointed. Excerpts:

By Ebele Orakpo

WHY I left the Army:

“I retired from the Nigerian Army in 2001 at a time that I was actually flying high in my career. I was not thinking of disengaging at all but then came this call. Jesus appeared to me twice. The message was clear – take the gospel of liberty to the four corners of the earth and to all the continents of the world. He added a couple of other things to make the vision clear and one of them was educational package with a Christian bias.

In fact, he asked me to start from the cradle up to the highest citadel of learning and that is why we have crèche for babies. We are in Abuja and Lagos for now and we hope to spread to other parts of the country, even to rural areas. The vision I received was to raise godly role models and release them into the society so they can model what we teach in church.”

•Col. Dickson Itodo (retd)

Why we started Liberty Square Academy:

“People open schools for different reasons – some for profit and some because they are naturally wired to educate people. Ours is a vision from God and we hold sacrosanct this vision while pursuing this educational programme.

Like I said, the vision is taken right from crèche to the university level. It will still be Liberty Square Academy, up to Liberty Square Secondary School, and Liberty Square University in future. Right now, we have six branches in all – five in Abuja and one in Lagos and the fee is very affordable.”

Unique selling point: “In this school, we have two unique selling points. One, every child goes home with a Bible verse every day. If you come to our assembly ground tomorrow for instance, you will see the kids rhyming the memory verse from the Bible. Stop a child from Liberty Square Academy at any time of the day and he/she will tell you the verse for the day.

The Lord said we should put these verses in them while they are young. ‘Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it,’ says Proverbs 22:6 and we hold strongly to this. Two, we combine the British system and American Montessori curriculum to give our students the best.”

Educational curriculum: “The curriculum is not the problem; the problem is the teachers being churned out from our colleges of education and faculties of education of our universities. That is where the problem is. You have a teacher for example that cannot teach the child basic English. We have a very big problem with English language that sometimes I wonder from where we are going to start solving the problem.

It is a national problem actually. Just interact with any graduate on the street and you hear him speaking English with tenses upside down. Recently, we tried to introduce a new set of teachers who we hoped would be able to give us what we needed and we were so disappointed that there was really none among them that could deliver. That is the challenge we are having. It is an emergency in the educational sector; the fact that we cannot actually deliver what should be. It’s a big issue.”

Way forward: “The government has to go back to the drawing board. We need to get back to the schools and start teaching the right stuff and stop cutting corners. Train the trainers; let them learn these things properly. Take up any English textbook; there is a way it goes. If you read it very well, you will know how to speak English. People are not studying any more.

“I left secondary school in 1980 and the university in 1985, yet, I am still reading English language. I check the dictionary every day, it is a continuous improvement. Apart from teaching them the right stuff in school, everybody should get back to school personally. It’s not only English but every other subject because if you don’t understand basic English, how can you understand history, biology, agriculture and other subjects?”

But you recruit your teachers from the same system…

“Exactly! For now, we have no solution to the problem. Only the government can solve this problem because they make policies; they set up the curriculum. May be they have to get back to the school system and get it right from there. Ensure they get it right at the primary and secondary school levels which feed higher institutions.

It’s garbage in, garbage out. I have listened to our teachers here and they are supposed to be among the best in Gwarinpa, Abuja and I wonder where we are heading to. Like I said, the curriculum is not the problem but the implementation.

Business challenges

If you fail English language, then you failed and you should not be given any waiver. Go back and repeat and pass.”

Challenges: “We face the same business challenges as other sectors. We are also fighting against the same forces that militate against the economy. On the one side is corruption and on the other side is power. We cannot use our teaching aids that need electricity except we have generator and that is money, added to the electricity bill. Parents will not understand why you have to tell them to pay more to offer your services because they also don’t have so much money.

“If for instance light truly improves, corruption is caged and people stop cutting corners and start doing things right, things will definitely improve,” he said.