₦airaland Forum

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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 that is done with tithes/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. If you do your research properly you would find that till today Covenant university hasn’t made any profit for its proprietors. Let us examine the revenue vs expenditure of Covenant university for example. The Covenant university tuition(undergraduate) ranges between 600,000-800,000 depending on level/program but I would base it on 700k. There are about 7,000 students on campus at a given time so I multiply 700,000 by 7,000=4.9 billion. So the university’s revenue from tuition fees is about 4.9 billion.

When considering expenditure I would like to keep the value projections conservative. I believe Covenant University’s wage bill to be around 500 million/month but I would calculate using 400 million since that is the average wage bill for a Nigerian university. So 400 million x 12 months= 4.8 billion. I currently don’t know how much CU pays to get electricity but reports had it that in 2012 the university spent 700 million naira on electricity. I would deliberately exclude expenditures like research grant, conference support, Infrastructure, field trips, medical services, internet provision e.t.c because I do not have real data to conclude how much they gulp yearly. So using just wage bill+Electricity, the university has spent 5.5 billion when the tuition fee is about 4.8 billion. This proves the former NUC president, Peter Okebukola right when he said that ‘’Church universities were being too dependent on the Church’’. Also, the VC of Crawford did buttress the fact that the proprietor base still donates 500 million yearly to Crawford as subsidy. If these subsidies weren’t in place Church universities would have been more expensive that secular ones.


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 Pa. Adeboye and 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), Methodist(Wesley) 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(e.g Crescent) 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 church.

Tritri:
@Aventures IF i may ask..The cost for the carcass ?

kopell:
@Aventures is one of the most humble Naija guy I ever did business with at distance, don't get me wrong there are many like him right here on these forum too. Spyder880 that name na BABA I mean in the last 4-6 years none any negative story about him that I know, I believe he has build more houses than any builder in this forum. I stand to be corrected especially in the east. Their are more younger professionals that have proven themselves to be the best at what they do, like abdulwastecx, rotech77, segzy14, skimanski, and many more. There is another finest builder with first two letters BITWORKS, or something.

Aventures:
very informative post from lawyer. I really appreciate that lawyer mention that he is not too certain abt the professional charges that you can haggle it out. the type of bldg used for the case study is not mentioned, if the bldg is bungalow then structural drwg is not needed except in a swampy area that may involve raft fdn and some  other structural element. Also it should be noted that from a storey building and above approval requires complete five set of structural detailing and calculation sheets duly signed by a COREN registered engineer. and the truth is that for a storey building duplex and others 35k is no where a good compensation for all the effort involve in the structural wrk, printing of six set of 10 pages of A3 detailing cost close to abt 15k will 20 k suffice for engr that will design and detailed or commissioned CAD technician to detail not to talk of the engineer that will stamp and put his practicing license on line, Aba, 35k is just not worth it. It is also worth noting that all this charges are not professional charges, there is a government regulated standard scale of fees for all sort of professional in building industry, so all this charges are based on individual prerogative and bargaining power.
Well i also noted that somebody said it is only architect that designs well sorry sir it seems you dont know the definition of design. the word designing is not specific to architect only Mech, elect, civil structural, water, environmental engrs all of them designs in their various field. Moreover structural engr is responsible for the safety of the structure and hw does he do that, he goes thru a rigours calculation to determined the type, size, spacing and arrangement of reinforcement, he gives specification on concrete strength, reinforcement strength, column positioning, fdn depth and so many others all these are the "design" he goes an extra Lenght to put all his result into drawings which is very tasking even more than archi drawing, despite all these architect get a little bit higher paid than structural engineer just because he is the initiator who puts the clients idea into a reality.

5p1naz:
hehe im an architect, and i'd like to explain a bit of that part to you. . . it's cheaper because, the [size=14pt]architect does all the thinking[/size]. . . i mean all the thinking. . . the architect not only draws, he designs. [size=14pt]draw and design are two different things[/size]. . . so the architect does all the thinking about how to make your building [size=14pt]safe, functional and aesthetically pleasing[/size], so that you money pays off at the end of the day. . . the stuctural engineer only comes in around the safety corner, even though the architect had worked a bit of that part already.

@poster, good work here. . .

mufutau55:
My Gari and kuli-kuli seller imports direct from Nigeria... my kids/grand calls it African cereals.

I bought the rods in December 2015 when the price first start going up in January 2016... now the price is ridiculous.
Aventures warn me that time to buy the rods in December 2015 because he knows the prices will go up in January 2016, never doubted him and went for the purchase... the decking work started in December 2015 and decked in January 2016. The man was my life-saver.

Cement was N1,450 a bag (300 bags)
Granite was 135k per ton (2 tons)
Stone dust was 90k per ton (2 tons)
16mm rod was 95k per ton (2 tons)
12mm rod was 120k per ton (3 tons)
10mm rod was 95k (1 ton)

Compared that to the prices now... it's a killer. We overbought intentionally because of the surging prices so we used all the leftovers on the upper block works, columns, and lintels... just few more iron rods were purchased.. the granite left over was enough.
You need a Builder that has vision...not those robbers and rogues who want to milk you dry. Thank God for @Aventures o.

Hajji M.

mufutau55:
It will give Nairaland a bad name and most of us will be affected because it takes one bad to spoil the bunch.
All people will read is Nairaland and Scam. We already have Yahoo boys messing-up internet, I don't think we want same for Nairaland.
One stupid person can be the whole network down, do we really need that? Let's not make it look like it's Nairaland that caused it.
Just my few cent, looking at it from the other perspectives.

Hajji M.

gbadexy:
I saw a post on my Facebook showing construction of houses or rather transformation of containers into buildings.
I thought I should post it here to get inputs.
Their price is quite steep but I assume our engineers here can work on something similar also at a cheaper cost.

Aventures:
An existing building for sale on okota road.
This property is directly facing okota express road, suitable for eatry, commercial building, hotel, shopping mall, bank etc.

For enquiry call 08023142108

whatsaap 08023152108

behemothengineers@gmail.com

Aventures:
Dear all,
A Toyota Tacoma 2000 model for sale at 1.5 M asking. Features
Transmission: Automatic
AC : Chilling
Interior: Fabrics
Entry Port : Lagos Tin Can
Year of Reg: 2015
Engine: V6 Engine running perfectly and fuel efficient
contact 08023142108

Aventures:
An existing building for sale on okota road.
This property is directly facing okota express road, suitable for eatry, commercial building, hotel, shopping mall, bank etc.

For enquiry call 08023142108

whatsaap 08023152108

behemothengineers@gmail.com

Aventures:
running efficiently, rugged and fuel efficient, very sound engine and body, Just a year plus. I just have to let go urgently now don't really wish but have no choice.... i am gonna miss d ride

Aventures:
Opportunity to own a commercial property! Do not let it pass you by. Nice Location for Hospital, Hotel, Banking hall, Mall, multi dwelling apartment etc

segcymoor:
Powerful machine!