Pastor (Mrs) Foluke Babade, wife of Pastor (Dr) Amos Dele Babade is the Proprietress of Dayspring Crèche, Nursery and Primary School, Kubwa, Abuja.
In this interview with The State Online, she spoke on the establishment of the school 20 years ago and other issues relating to education.
Dayspring Crèche, Nursery and Primary School is marking its 20 years of existence. Tell us how it all began?
* Students of the school during an activity marking the 20th anniversary*
We clocked 20 years exactly on the 4th of January, 2019 which means it was established in 1999. But we decided to put the celebration between 14th to 20th January because the children resumed on the 7th January, 2019. By the grace of God, it has been a fun-filled, glorious journey. I will say there is no glory in any man if the Lord did not back the person up.
The establishment of Dayspring Crèche, Nursery and Primary School (DCNAPS), Kubwa is just God, His mercies, His grace and what God Himself wanted to do. Because looking at my life as a nurse and married to a doctor, there is no bearing in establishing a school. If there is anything at all one should establish, it should be a hospital. But as God would have it, we are we are today.
We never intend to come to Abuja. I was born in Lagos, bred there although my secondary school was in Ondo State, Ado Grammar School to be precise because I told my dad; let me get out of Lagos to go and school a little bit before coming back home which we did. I never looked at it that there should be life outside Lagos that would be filled with fun. But after meeting my husband at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), things changed. He was a student of the College of Medicine, University of Lagos and I was having my Nursing Education in LUTH. We attended the same fellowship, the CNUL/LUTH/College of Medicine University of Lagos. Somehow we (my husband and I) met. Not that we knew each other but a gift somebody gave me and I asked him; please I don’t know the person by this name but in case the person is where I am, show the person to me so that I can thank the person.
When they showed him (my husband) to me, I said thank you for the book you sent to me. But believe me, if I’m to point later to the person I thanked, I wouldn’t have recognised him, I just said let me show appreciation since that is the way we are brought up and from there we started.
* A Cultural Day at the school
There was a time we are having a drama presentation in our group and I had a disagreement with a brother. My husband (to be) just came and asked why are you brethren quarrelling? I said don’t mind this brother but after he (my husband) settled it, he now said his name is Dele Babade and the name clicked with the name on the book. And I asked him; you are Dele Babade and he said yes. He told me I attended one school and I looked at him and asked why this question ? How did you get all my information? He now said there is a roommate of his who knows me and when he mentioned his name (the roommate), it happened to be the choir leader and I happened to be a member of the choir. That was how we started.
By the grace of God when we got married, he was to go and serve but he was posted to Abuja and that is the story. I now asked; how can they post you to Abuja to go and serve and I said you cannot go because Abuja is north and we are not leaving Lagos.
One of his classmates then happened to be son of a governor, the Governor of Lagos State. He said they are going to talk to the governor which they did. They pushed the names of four of them but only his name did not go through. He was still returned back to go to Abuja. We later mentioned to our landlady and she said we should have informed her earlier. The landlady said she could have done it for us as she did for the daughter. And by the time she (landlady) came back, she gave a price that we couldn’t even afford. With that anger I just said, go to that Abuja you will not die there, the Lord will take you to Abuja and bring you back safely. And by the time he came to Abuja, after the service year he was to return to Lagos and along the line, someone just said that people are looking for opportunity to come to Abuja and you have the opportunity to stay in Abuja but you want to go back to Lagos. And he told the person that ‘I have agreed with my wife that we are staying back in Lagos. But the person asked ‘ what if I give your wife a job?’ She gave him the letter of employment to me.
I was in Lagos and one day I was to resume night duty I just saw a dispatched rider on DHL bike and I just said, who is this man looking for? The man parked, came down and handed me an envelope with my name and I said who is sending me letter? I opened the envelope and to my amazement, it was a letter of employment and I asked myself, did I apply to anywhere, who is giving me employment. I looked through the letter. Immediately where I sat down, I just picked a paper and wrote a letter of resignation to LUTH immediately. I paid a month salary back in lieu of notice. I just carried my baby that was still less than a year and I picked the little things I could and joined the next available flight to Abuja. Nigerian Airways was still operating then. I started working as a nurse in government hospital and my husband was working there too.
Along the line, we asked ourselves which church are we joining. He told me that when he was serving he attended a church in Sheraton Hotel and we went there. At the end of the service, the pastor in charge, Olu Obanure late now, visited us with the wife. Our church that we attended in Lagos we never had such a visit even when we had our baby and doing naming. No pastor came.
We concluded that this church that showed this much love is where we would be going and that is how we became members of the Redeemed Christian Church. We became workers in the church. We now had to build the church, working together and after the building of the church which is the first model in Abuja. That is where we were and my husband was the fundraising .
Immediately after the building of the church, we were posted to a village in Bwari. And people were saying why should Pastor Obanure post you to a village? When they asked my husband he did not really know what to say because I was not in the church that day. But later when we met, I told him that if God had not put it in the mind of the pastor to post us to the village, he wouldn’t have done that and if the Lord has done that definitely he wants us to the there and I said we are going and this was around 1995 or 1996. We started the job and we enjoyed it and God continued to bless us. Then we had a car, a jalopy station wagon that God later miraculously replaced with a Mercedes Benz 200. The Lord surprised us in manifolds and I believed it is because we obeyed Him.
The woman who sold the car to us knew my husband’s boss and she told us to go with the car and asked us to come back when we have the complete payment. Mind you, the car was supposed to be sold for N150,000 but what we had then was a cheque for N120,000 . We later gave testimony in the church because we knew it was the Lord’s doing. And that is how we started going to Bwari.
We were going to Bwari when the Lord provided this land where the school is standing today. The land was bought for N50,000 then but we didn’t have the money to build. Our neighbours to the left and to the right finished building their structures while the place remained a dumping ground. But anytime we are coming from Bwari, we would go to the land, stretched our hands and bless it and we’d go. Anytime we gathered little money, we’d go there and one day I told my husband to let us build the boys’ quarter and the money we get from rent we would use it to build the main building; that was our plan. But after building the boys’ quarter, people were coming offering my husband irresistible and mouth-watering money. A particular person came and offered N5 million and my husband said we can sell it, get another place and build but I resisted and stood my ground. But what I usually do when I find myself in any dicey situation is to go to God and talk as if I was seeing Him and discussing with him. I prayed for God’s guidance and I said let Your will be done. However, my husband was bent on selling the land.
He later went ahead and informed me two years later that he went ahead to meet the people who wanted to buy the land from the Foreign Affairs ministry. He met a woman there and introduced himself to her. The woman said, ‘Oh! The place we wanted to buy for N7 million but my husband said no, it is N5 million. Shocked, she paused and looked at my husband and asked for his name again. She said ‘you are a Yoruba man, do they asked you to come to Abuja and not make money or do they say you should not prosper in life ?’ and on and on. Somebody that did not do anything want to make N2 million from you. She abused my husband but he got home and couldn’t tell me.
That was how we gradually started. But people from time to time were still coming to measure the land and I always tell my teachers to let me know if they see anybody there because we won’t be there and somebody would come and take it. That was how God helped us, we were able to file the paper and the land we eventually got was four times of the original land and that was how the school started. Interestingly, I happened to be the first driver in the school, bringing the children and taking them back to their homes before I eventually handed over to a driver we got later. The school was increasing and our children were doing very well and I believe it was the Holy Spirit because the children were standing out in all their endeavours.
What we wanted to do initially was a Day Care Centre but people started came to us and pleading that we should include nursery and we said how are we going to have nursery without primary and that is how we started. Later I had to quit my job as a nurse and face the school job squarely.
One thing is that I don’t take things easy with my teachers; I don’t take excuse for failing because I will deal with you. If you want to work with me, I see myself as the chief servant because we are all servants. The Chief Servant is to lead other servants and you do what I want you to do. I remembered one of my teachers who said to me, “Mommy, you are now soft because I know you then that I remember there was a day it was raining heavily and you were challenging those who came late asking them if they are salt and will melt in the rain”. There was a particular time when she was pregnant and came late to school I asked if pregnant was a disease and she concluded that I am a no-nonsense woman .
The name of the school is Dayspring Schools, do you have college?
We never intend to go into college. It was the regime of Mallam Nasir el-Rufai that told to us that education must be basic, nine years. I reluctantly have to establish the Dayspring College but to the glory of God, the college too is doing well today and it was established 12 years ago.
Every name has a history behind it and also some significance, what is the history behind Dayspring?
Dayspring comes from the gospel and it is from Luke 2:28. The Bible said that Jesus Christ is the dayspring, the light that the Lord sent to illuminate the world. The school belongs to Jesus, who am I?
In the past 20 years since the establishment of the school, what have been the achievements in terms of your students gaining admission into higher schools and most especially tertiary institutions?
If you want me to go over the achievements, I cannot finish the long list. At a particular time when the children leave our primary school to go to other schools, they always ask them where are they from, that they don’t know there is a good school in Kubwa like this. There was a time one of our parents relocated to the UK and by the time they took the daughter to a school, they couldn’t place that girl in any class because they tested her and her standard is over her classmates in the UK. And they asked which school the child is coming from. At a time in FGGC Bwari, they said our children are always standing out and most of them are in gifted schools across the country. There are many of them outside that we cannot even recognise again but who still recognise me. They are in Ghana, Malaysia, United States, London and they are doing extremely well. Some of them have contributed to our 20th anniversary magazine and they are reading nice courses seen as difficult. They are studying courses like Engineering, Pharmacy, Medicine and the likes. We made them to realise that you don’t run away from Mathematics. I thank God that I have teachers who are always on their toes that stand shoulder to shoulder with parents with background in Education to challenge how they arrive at certain answers. At a particular time inspectors came from the Education Department and said ‘Madam, we realise that you having some people that did not study education as teachers’. I told I’m sorry about it but not many who go about as teachers have things to offer. I don’t just bring you in because you carry certificate as a teacher, I will test you. You will undergo the theory, practical and the oral. I assess every step of you and I said I have a lot of them that are not teachers but they dish out what I want for my children.
We have also travelled far and wide. We have been to Kainji, Yankari and Badagry at the Slave Port. We went to Kainji in our numbers and the children were well catered for. The only we bought during these excursions were soft drinks, other things like food and water were taken along. Outside the country, we have been to Egypt, Holland, Israel, United Kingdom and the US twice.
Apart from these, we have also gone for many competitions and at a particular time at the Arts and Culture in Area 10, nobody battles with us for first position when it comes to art and craft for a long time. And to the glory of God, the children are doing extremely well in their institutions. The parents are also proud of our achievements and I say all praises and adorations to God Almighty. Our inter-house sport competitions have also helped in bringing out the best and the talents in the children to detect which areas they are good at.
Most big schools like yours always have the plans to establish universities; do you have that in the offing?
I have said something earlier that I never wanted to establish secondary schools but for el-Rufai’s tenure that insisted that introduced 9-year basic education in the FCT from primary to JSS 3. But whatever God wants to do nobody can stand on the way of God.
What is your comment on the standard of education in Nigeria today ?
The education in Nigeria deserves apology because the curriculum is being tampered with on daily basis and instead of improving, it is coming down. I started something in my schools which I now see other schools doing. When our children come in, we start them with something difficult because something easy is easy for anybody to do. But when you are able to get the one that are difficult the easy ones will just be by the way. Go to the developed world and compare our medical and engineering students with those one over there, we still beat them hands down because Nigerians have tough upbringing.
That is what we started with so that our children will be able to distinguish themselves anywhere in the world. I have on many occasions sounded a note of warning to my teachers that if any of them connive with any parent to cut corners or to seat for any child’s exams, if I don’t know, whatever they give you, you will not prosper with it. I gave the warning so that they will not accept it so as to allow the kids to use their skills and what they have to be able to do what they can do. Now we are 20 years and I said I want some presentations from my children and I asked what about the map of the world ? I said divide the map into continents and know the number of countries in the world and I want a student that will recite the whole countries in the continents of the world. If someone stands and recite the whole of Psalm 119 off head with over 150 verses then I should have a child that should recite the countries of the world by their continents. Within 24 hours, a child was given that could recite all the countries in the world. Even many of us who finished from the universities did not even know the number of continents let alone the countries in the world; it is never in our syllabus. But when your knowledge is vast, every other little thing that comes your way will be so easy. I don’t believe in calculator to do things because I remember that when we are in schools then, there was nothing like calculator and that is still in me. We spoilt ourselves all because we don’t want to go through the rigours of calculation. I told my teachers it is part of my policy a child should go home with at least 3 assignments in a day. Some parents will come and say, the assignments you are giving to the children are too much and I will tell them others are not complaining but if you think that it is too many, do the little you can do but we are not changing it. And I tell them that is why we are Dayspring and not other schools. By the grace of God and with what the children are able to do, as long as I live, whatever God wants me to do in the lives of the children, I will do. Let government bring their curriculum and we will combine it with what I want for my children. And I said to my teachers that you will use the curriculum from the government and the school’s.
You are already 20 as a school, where do you want the school to be in the next 20 years and what are the plans in place to achieve these objectives?
If Christ tarries his coming because we don’t know tomorrow because it’s only God that knows tomorrow. The bible says the way of the Lord is not ours, He is a mysterious God. If anybody asks me 20 years ago where I was, I will say I just landed in Abuja and working with government and I never knew I will get to this level. So in 20 years to come, only heaven knows where I will be. I don’t know but He leads and I follow, He gives instruction and I obey. Whatever He wants me to do; I go ahead and do it. My pride is seeing those children becoming somebody. One of the students walked to my office one day and introduced herself but I cannot recognise her and she told me she finished from a university in Egypt. We looked at each other and embraced. Some of them are married now, like my first daughter who is also a product of the school. If this is the little area that God has created me for to influence this generation, I’m grateful but I know He still has a lot in stock because no one knows tomorrow and I wait on Him to do whatever He wants me to do.
*Pastor (Dr) Babade (in cap)