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By Blessing Ani and Chisom Emmanuel
Former Nigerian Ambassador Delegate to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Prof. Michael Omolewa, has acknowledged the contributions of Babcock University (BU), Ilisan-Remo, Ogun State, to delivery of quality university education to Nigerians in the last 23 years.
Prof. Omolewa, who spoke at BU’s 63/23 Founder’s Day celebration lecture, titled “Thus far: Shaping the Future”, traced the origin of the university to the Seventh Day Adventist College of West Africa (ACWA), established 63 years ago.
He further traced the university’s name to Elder David Caldwell Babcock, a missionary of the Seventh Day Sabbath, who arrived Nigeria by boat from Sierra Leone through Ghana, then the Gold Coast, on the Sabbath Day, March 7, 1914.
Said he: “By 1914, the Seventh Day Adventist Church (SDA) had been preceded by the Catholic Church, which had planted a Church and established a school in Benin as early as 1515. The early missionary efforts were aborted by the trade in human cargo and were only revived during the abolition movements of the early nineteenth century.
“Although the SDA excelled in the promotion of non-formal education, and in its distance learning efforts through the correspondence courses of the Voice of Prophecy teachings, the Church however scored low on its contribution to the formal education sector.
“Thus, while the Catholic Church, the Baptist, Methodist and CMS had secondary schools in most major cities, by 1960 the SDA secondary schools were only two, less than what the CMS had in just Ibadan city where it established Ibadan Grammar School in 1913, Lagelu Grammar School in 1956 and Yejide Grammar School for girls in the same year.”
According to him, SDA education work in teacher preparation similarly made slow progress while its primary schools were few and most of them prepared the pupils only to standard four, and sending only a few carefully selected pupils to proceed to the few central schools to complete the primary education programme of the standards five and six.
Omolewa explained that there was only one Teacher Training College, which was established at Ibadan in 1932, which was transferred to Ihie in Eastern Nigeria in 1947, stating that an Adventist Training College was later founded at Otun-Ekiti in 1955 but there was not a single secondary school until 1947 when one was established at Ihie.
He said the political development in Nigeria, which brought about self-government for the regions from 1954, had considerable effect on the education work of the SDA.
“As news arrived about the prospective Independence of the country, it became imperative that additional facilities for post primary school education were required to meet the need of the Church. The realisation of this need led to the founding of the Adventist Grammar School at Ede in 1960, the year Nigeria became an independent nation, ‘’ Omolewa noted.
He stressed that the SDA Church had no choice other than joining in establishing higher institutions, which was the background to the establishment of the Adventist College of West Africa, ACWA, at Ilisan in Remo land to serve the whole of West Africa and remaining an Adventist institution and a college.
On the emergence of BU, he said the establishment of the university was made possible by the incessant industrial disputes leading to persistent strikes in public universities and the troubled times which followed the annulment of the 1993 elections as well as the sudden death of Sanni Abacha and M.K.O Abiola.
“These developments had led to the emergence of General Abdulsalam as Head of the Military government. Abdulsalam was clearly in a hurry to leave the seat of power and get out of the scene. He was also eager to solve as many outstanding challenges as possible, which he inherited.”
Omolewa said one of his acts was to allow private universities to be established; the seminary’s authorities acted and were confident that with its history of producing graduates in collaboration with Andrews University and it grabbed the opportunity and applied.
