By Ife Olaleye
There has been so much buzz about Church universities being expensive in Nigeria and I would like to address some of this controversies mostly using Covenant University as a case study

Tithes/Offerings are used to build Church Universities? This seems to be a widely asserted theory. This is partly not true because most Churches don’t exactly use Tithes/Offerings for building church universities but create special donations for that purpose. Usually, the initial university capital projects are funded with these donations. We have to remember that the core mandate of any church isn’t not to create universities but to preach the gospel of Jesus and help the poor and this done with tithe/offering to establish outreaches, pay pastoral salaries, build new churches etc.

Donations can’t sustain recurrent expenditure: while ‘excited’ members would usually agree to pay donations for the initial financial responsibility of the universities. No church would be able to get its church members to continually pay for its recurrent expenditure. In fact if any of these church schools were to try and choose continual donations as an alternative to ‘High’ tuition fees the next thing you would see are private university lecturers going on strike.

Are Church universities profitable? I do not believe any sane investor or business man would venture into the tertiary education sector with the aim of making profit. There is a reason why you wouldn’t find Otedola or Dangote investing in education.

Assumed wealth of the Church: there is a saying in Yoruba land that ‘’the chicken sweats but the feathers won’t let you know’’. Would you believe that Oyedepo nearly missed his own deadline for the establishment of the first two halls of residence in Covenant University? because donations weren’t coming forth, until God miraculously provided.

‘Expensive’ tuition isn’t unique to Pentecostal Churches: whilst many choose to assault Bishop Oyedepo for charging high tuition fees. It is important to note that even Orthodox churches which are known not to be ‘’prosperity conscious’’ charge within the same bracket e.g Bowen(Baptist), ECWA(Bingham), Godfrey Okoye(Catholic), Adventist(Babcock), JABU(CAC) e.t.c

Expensive tuition isn’t unique to Church universities alone; Church universities are ranked to be generally good with Covenant University averagely in top three on the two out of four most reputable rankings in the world-Webometrics and Times higher education. However Islamic schools that are not in the top 50 universities in Nigeria but also charge about half a million which is about the same thing CU charges.

The underlining purpose for creating Church schools; This is very important, the creation of church schools isn’t to actually teach physics and chemistry, but to create a spiritual revolution. Take that spiritual revolution away from CU, then it is by no means different from Afebabalola university. Therefore, if you are a committed member of your church you are already a member of that movement. For instance I am not a living faith member, but by attending CU I have joined myself to the spiritual movement of the existing members.

Finally, Church education can not be seen as a means to compensate members for years of dedication or commitment to tithing but an end time ammunition to take over the education sector for Jesus. However the church has a responsibility to the poor-and that cannot be overstated. Although it is wrong for you to expect material gain from your church because you gave your Tithes/Offerings to them-it goes against the principles of scripture. When you give your tithe next time, remember that you are giving it out to be blessed by God and not Church