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.

Nice write-ups op, nobody is forcing anybody to attend church owned universities.

You have said it all....

But this is not how Catholic ran churches way back then.....its too expensive...well na dem sabi

Lalasticlala Myndd44
Ok so I forgot to add these other points.
If the church chooses to run a completely free educational system it would have sacrificed quality on the alter of affordability. If Osun/Oyo with oil money and tax can't successfully fund just one university then how do you expect the church to do so. Secondly, there are lots of living faith members in Covenant university for example. There are several middle class families in CU too so it was really not a university of all rich kids as some say. However, this issue of poor members not being able to afford them still makes the church look bad. So later this year when am back in school for the Alumni conference I would give a suggestion to LFC to deliberately invite wealthy members who can offer to sponsor indigent but brilliant students from the church community-That is d only option, to sacrifice quality for affordabilty doesnt cut it for me.

For those of you asking for the salary scale. I can't find that of CU now but here is landmark uni's own. However, landmark's salary scale MAY be lower than CU's own.

nice one op,,some people will just open their mouth and be talking nonsense without calculating...u didn't even add the money they pay academic and non academic staffs

Ok

go and do get help to be able to afford the payment

get help is like online money ritual and many have not known. I didn't know until I joined since last year. After you register 2tru my signture, I will contact you

or
Con tact me 0 81 85 732 107

.

They are there for profit maximization just like other private business

Them Don come to defend their yahoo yahoo business ooooo

You really tried.

These your points should put paid to the sensitive issue of church private university and high fee.

Funding recurrent expenditure cannot be through donations either from church members or from the GOs selling their luxury properties. It can only be possible for a year or two because it is not sustainable.

The best universities in the world are the most expensive.

I am so much impressed by Covenant University performance as shown by their top ranking among Nigerian universities.

The OP's logical reasoning shown in his writing is a pointer he got value for money he paid to study at Ota.

I know a family friend member that attends(ed) (not sure if he has graduated) Landmark University on full Scholarship funded by Bishop Oyedeo/Winners.

These our 'men of God' are trying. Their only problem is flamboyant lifestyle- of one man riding several private jets and moving about with horse whipping security operatives. Quite unChrist-like and unphillantropist they claim to be.

Keep defending your scammer

Lie

Op. You talked sense

Some pple won't read and understand this but will come here and be ranting like their father can run a secondary sch sef.... Public universities and Subsidized by govt so if u can't afford private go to a public sch mbok....

I bet the op a is member of winner's chapel.

I wait for that day when Nigerians will wake up and work instead of praying hard!!!!

Nice analysis....

If you think education is expensive......try ignorance..

CecyAdrian:
Them Don come to defend their yahoo yahoo business ooooo

Omo egbe leleyi o!

am i the only one that noticed that the op and the first 6 commenters are all working together or were paid to support the OP,so it look like he s making sense,foolishly?

obviously a sponsored post by RCCG or winners' member, trying to justify the unjustifiable.

Pls, OP,what do they do with tithes and offerrings,then?...where did they get money that was used for this massive projects from?

Do u realise that RCCG's revenue is far more than 12 states' IGR combined?.each of these states affect their indigenes' lives than RCCG,physically

Christianity itself is a scam

scammers everywhere

iammolahs:
nice one op,,some people will just open their mouth and be talking nonsense without calculating...u didn't even add the money they pay academic and non academic staffs

Shows you didn't understand the write up. Who knows maybe you attended 'such' universities

Churches are not created for profit making. If a church cannot offer free and affordable education to the public, who else will. The problem confronting our education system in Nigeria include the high cost of gaining knowledge.
Free Education Equality Of Opportunity For Student

All the nonsense wey ds one write put for there na warsh


So churches no dey gain....


Wait till i open my own sha



Anyways

Drabeey was HERE

Your last point is the worst of all.

Creating a spiritual revolution ke? What are the churches for then?

iammolahs:
nice one op,,some people will just open their mouth and be talking nonsense without calculating...u didn't even add the money they pay academic and non academic staffs

Well, I have only this to say here. If Pastor Oyedepo wasn't making profit from the CU university, he wouldn't venture into having 2 other schools. If a business is not making profit, they close down. So you mean to tell me the VC likes spending his money to create schools, get fees paid at such rates, create other schools and loose money? Lol..that's ridiculous.

Meanwhile, all private universities do not have a fixed price, you see some lower than the other, they pay the academic and non academic staffs, they run electricity too, and of course still make profit from this. Some of their pastors who have kids do not have to pay their fees completely, they pay a certain amount. So if he doesn't make profit, he can as well make a statement and say all the pastor's who have kids must pay the fees completely like the others who aren't pastors. Abeg oga go and get your facts right.

Nothing just do the needful

Statsocial:
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.

God bless you. I've shared this thought in various platforms to inform people but I discovered it's not just about misinformation but hate for the church makes them hold onto their sentiments. Tithes and offerings cannot easily build a church building not to talk of running a university.

---

Fmdipo:
go and do get help to be able to afford the payment

get help is like online money ritual and many have not known. I didn't know until I joined since last year. After you register 2tru my signture, I will contact you

Oga. U're a thief! I've been on get help for d past one month n it hasn't paid me.

Nonsense, if all these wishy washy pentecostal churches cannot provide free or subsidized education for all their members, they should shut up and close down. How can only the rich members of a church be able to attend the universities built on the sweat of most church members ?? And the so called church still tries to justify this obvious class divide and then pretend to be following Christ ??

Remember Anglican and Catholic church schools were affordable by all and produced some of the best standards of educations for decades - they hardly charged any schools fees.

konfused:


Nice analysis....

If you think education is expensive......try ignorance..

Despite all the paper certificates, the Nigerian "graduate" is just on average quite ignorant about the world around him.