By Moses Nosike

Mrs. Alaba Kasumu is the proprietress, Brownsville College, Ikoyi. Her passion for youth empowerment and development triggered her vision to establish the school and contribute to the society through educating our children.

In this interview with Moses Nosike, she said, having been abroad and saw how things are being done, she discovered that strong and developed economies of the world took their roots from standardized educational system which in turn encourages SMEs, entrepreneurship development, industrialization, science & technology.

Kasumu

According to her, economic growth and development will be difficult to achieve if we don’t have a sound educational system where the Nigerian child would be able to create job for himself or herself after education in the absence of white colar jobs and most importantly position themselves for global competitiveness.

What steps do you think Buhari can take to empower Nigerian youths?

I think the President has to look through a broader perspective from the grassroots. Most of our youths don’t have the right foundations and it is affecting their future and also the country. Good foundation matters a lot in life because it will propel you to success. Many of our students don’t have a good foundation right from primary school. All we do is push these children to secondary schools even when we know they don’t have the right foundation from the start. Parents and teachers have to intensify efforts right from primary schools.

Nowadays students don’t repeat classes when they fail or aren’t performing well in school. The word you hear is that their parents ‘can’t afford it’. If teachers insist that such student should repeat the class because of low performance, you see their parents changing school for them. Unlike our days if you fail to meet the expected criteria you have to repeat the class. After repeating the class you will see that child would improve. Let’s us allow them to have a good foundation before going to secondary schools, be it private or public schools.

The Buhari administration should ensure that an average Nigeria child receives education empowerment. Government should also provide skill acquisition centres that promotes self-reliance in the system and properly monitored.

With this vision, what type of future do you want to build for these children?
My vision for Brownsville College, Ikoyi is broad. First, we want to produce leaders of tomorrow that would drive the Nigerian economy towards the right direction. This we have started through our quality training in the school with well qualified teachers. We are also looking at producing good science students that would reposition what we have today in the country as science and technology.

As a mother, who wants our children to thrive in life and be successful, these proper foundations are necessary. As a parent with my child in the school receiving the same training with other children, we are ensuring that they are been properly monitored. For me as a parent, I make it a duty to check my child’s book everyday and make sure he does his home work, and read up on topics done earlier in the day at school. Every weekend he brings all his note books out and we both go through them. If any teacher missed any topic or did not minute on the child’s book, I write a note to that effect and demand a reply from that teacher before the end of that week. So parents, ‘all hands must be on deck’ for the success of these children. And remember to turn off the TV’s and the games during weekdays. This system will help our children concentrate more on school work. Ensure their phones and computers are games, music, movies FREE. If we can do this, no matter how busy we are, we would be able to put teachers on their toes and they would give your children what you paid for and what the children deserve.

Again, am so thankful to God for giving me this opportunity and privilege to nurture these children to be well disciplined, respectful, confident in themselves because these are attributes of great leaders.

What do you want to achieve with this quality science laboratory?

With our state of the art laboratory, we want to give our students the 21st century experience, so they can compete with any school out there. Again it will help them have a good science background. Many developed countries of the world never joked with science. This is what we have in mind so our students can compete both home and abroad. Looking at the country today, Nigeria is in dire need of science and technology development and if we don’t lay a good foundation from our schools the gap will remain there. So, whatever knowledge we are giving to the students at Brownsville College ,Ikoyi is to impact and add value to the children and the environment they belong.

What is your take on women empowerment?
Women empowerment is necessary especially in this part of the world where most women are bread winners of their families. However, women need to be empowered so they can assist their husband in the home because cost of living now is too high for one person to bear. Income of many men are nothing to write home about. In such cases women should help out if empowered. Again, government need to empower more women at all levels. Organize skill acquisition programmes that can empower them to be useful in the society and at home. Such empowerment should not be a one off thing. Organisations should not leave it for government to handle alone.