5th June, 2024
By Nehru Odeh
Evang Abraham Olorunnimilo defies description. His exploits in the education sector elicit wonder and awe laced with incredulity, a kind of incredulity that makes one keep wondering and waiting for answers.
Waiting for answers? Sure. Though armed with only a primary school leaving certificate, the clergyman is currently running a school in a rustic community called Papalanto in Ewekoro, Local Government Area of Ogun State, in which students don’t pay tuition fees.
Aside from enjoying a tuition-free education, the students get other materials such as books, uniforms and other necessary items free of charge.
Incredulous? But wait for this. The intriguing thing about Olorunnimilo is that he has been running the school, Cornerstone Charity Mission School for the past seven years with virtually no support from government or corporate bodies: which is tantamount to squeezing water out of a stone.
“There has not been any financial support from government or any corporate bodies. We have sent letters to corporate bodies. Nobody came to our aid. We sent messages out online. Very few individuals, sometimes once in a while, send us some tokens here and there.
“This school needs big money to reach a high standard. Sometimes someone would just send us some token,” he regretted.
Then how does he get the means to run the school? “Some little money I made from the ministry, we mixed it together to run the school. And that is it so far for now, ” Olorunnimilo said.
Yet despite its meagre resources, despite its location in an out-and-out community, despite its poor facilities, the school which operates both primary and secondary levels, has been producing pupils and students whose lives have changed tremendously for the better and excelled academically, topping the lot in external examinations.
Certainly, Cornerstone Charity Mission School Papalanto, as its name implies, is the proverbial chief cornerstone. Explicitly put, it is the rejected stone that has become the head of the corner. The results are there for all to see. Still, the question are, for how long is the school going to be rejected by the government, corporate organizations and well-heeled individuals in the society? For how long is it going to struggle to survive?
Certainly, at the moment the school is struggling to survive, as it lacks facilities that will definitely improve standards and make the clergyman realize his vision of founding a first-class tuition-free school, where students are given qualitative education with morals and discipline.
“We are facing a lot of challenges here. And we need help and assistance. Even those who are receiving money from pupils and students have challenges: not to talk of those that don’t receive money. Here we don’t receive any money. We don’t take even five kobo from any parent.
“We have close to 200 children here. Nobody pays any farthing. God said we should not collect any money at all. That’s why we have children beyond religious and ethnic boundaries – Muslim children, pagan children as well as those from other tribes, ” Olorunnimilo told newsmen.
The challenges the school is facing are legion. Not only does it lack enough chairs, the ones they are using are dilapidated and improvised from unfurnished wood. It also lacks other vital things a school needs such as enough space for classrooms, ceilings for the classrooms, teachers, science laboratories, a good library, uniforms and books for the students- some of the students cannot afford to get books and uniforms for themselves.
“Here people cannot pay for uniforms, so we give free uniforms. So, as you can see, we have mixed uniforms – the free ones we gave them before and the new ones which some parents cannot buy. But we want to give them free uniforms. Some of them don’t have books because this is a very remote area. So we look for means to get them books. We want to make everything here free. But financially it has not been easy,” the clergyman lamented.
Olorunnimilo also said the school had only been registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC and not with the Ogun State Government, as it lacks adequate facilities and conducive classrooms. Yet, state government officials keep visiting the school, threatening to shut it.
“Sometimes when officials of the Education Board in the state come here, they challenge us. They always threaten to shut the school. I always tell them this is free. If you want to lock it, you can lock it. And they will just go back. So the classroom we are having is not conducive at all.”
Still, the questions begging for answers are: Why did this clergyman with only a primary school leaving certificate, yet speaks impeccable English, go out of his way to start a tuition-free school in Papalanto, a rustic community in Ogun State? What informed his vision? What drives his passion? What does he stand to gain from investing his meagre resources in the school?
Olorunnimilo said he started the school based on the instruction God had given him and the vision he had. This is indeed remarkable, considering the fact that he had only a primary school leaving certificate.
According to him, he had always loved education, but couldn’t go beyond Primary Six because he lost his parents before the age of 10.
“When I was young, I was very brilliant. But I lost my parents at a tender age. I lost my father and my mum when I was under 10. I loved to further my education but there was no helping hand. So I had to drop out. Everyone knew I had a vision. But they tried to attack my education when I was young.
“When I gave my life to Christ, I used to feel the impact of not having someone to sponsor me to school. When I see children roaming about, I used to feel what they are feeling. When I gave my life to Christ – I’m sorry to say this -and I saw how students pay extremely high fees in schools owned by big churches, I used to be worried. I used to say if God gave me money like those big churches, I would organize a free school.
“But when we got to Papalanto, God said I should go and start a free school. Ah, where do I get the money? We are not running a flamboyant ministry. We are not a ministry that depends on offering and all that, I thought. ” Olorunnimilo averred.
Still, the clergyman also said he had a mission to run a school in which students are taught morals and discipline, as he lamented that children are no longer taught discipline and good behaviour in schools.
“But God said we should start. And we had to start. One, God ministered to us that discipline and fear of God are no longer taught in schools, unlike what happened in the past. He said we should be instilling the fear of God and discipline into children to catch them young, ” he said, adding that a fish is easier to fold when it is not yet dry.
“We want to instil discipline into the children So that anywhere they go, they can be good ambassadors of the school and good citizens. That is our vision: to reduce stubbornness and arrogance in our youths of today by imparting skills to them alongside education.”
Still, an intriguing thing about Olorunnimilo’s leap of faith and what he has succeeded in doing with his meagre resources is that he has impacted the lives of the students positively.
“What I can really say about that is that they are doing well. The teachers are doing well. I know that through my own son. He is really performing very well, even at home. He is doing his homework well,” a parent confessed.
Esther Olasukanmi, who brought her five kids from Cote d’Ivoire to attend the school also spoke effusively about how it has impacted their lives positively.
“Since when my children enrolled in this school, I saw great changes in their lives, their behaviour, character and even their speech. I was so surprised that when I brought my son to the school, they wanted to take him to a lower class. I begged them not to do so. And they later agreed. But when they started examining his books after a while, they saw that he had improved tremendously,” she maintained.
Mrs Okah, another parent also revealed how the school changed her children’s lives. “When I got here, what I saw beat my imagination. Because since my kids came here, they’ve been improving in their education, in their speaking. In fact, intellectually, they are very very sharp. I can’t but continue to thank God for the life of our daddy, the founder and the General Overseer of this mission, ” She said.
Asked if he was open to partnership with others, especially government and corporate organisations, Olorunnimilo responded in the affirmative.
“Yes. If you have a vision that is real, you can not execute it alone. The only thing is that our goal cannot be tampered with. We have a goal. God said we should make it free. And we have our rules. Discipline is a task,” he maintained.
Asked again how he feels when he sees the students and his ministry growing, Olorunnimilo, who is a personification of passion, said:
“One of my joys after my salvation is these children. Any time I sit within the compound and I see them going and coming, greeting me, I used to respond with tears. So I thank God.
“I am an emotional person to the core. So whenever I see the children, I remember then when I was eager to go to school. But there was nobody to sponsor my education. It used to touch the innermost part of my heart.
“I thank God. By His grace He is using me to help dreams come to reality, helping me to impact. If you come to this world without making an impact and impacting others, your life has no meaning. No matter how rich you may be, impacting others is one of the purposes of coming to this world,” Olorunnimilo maintained.