From OKEY SAMPSON, Aba
The easiest way of developing a community is to site a school within its environment. Many rural communities which could not have been heard of are today household names even hundreds of kilometres away.
Eke-Owerri, a rustic and sleepy community in the northern fringes of Obingwa Local Government of Abia State, just about 10 kilometres from Aba, the commercial hub is a good example of this scenario.
The town has come into some prominence with the establishment of the Education Development Academy (TEDA)
TEDA has indeed changed the community’s landscape and given it national recognition particularly in the academic world. At the beginning of each academic season, parents from different parts of the country bring their children and wards to the school that was built in the middle of a forest at the outskirts of the community, an environment best for teaching and learning.
Commenting on the choice of the site during a recent orientation for new students, the founder said apart from making Eke-Owerri embrace modernity “the property’s proximity to the founder’s native compound, the central location to the entire community, the proximate location of all three major churches (Catholic, Qua-Iboe and the Seventh-Day Adventist Churches), as well as the Community Cultural Centre counted in favour of locating TEDA in its present address.”
TEDA, a school committed to total education in real and practical terms was founded in 2006 preparatory for actual take off in 2007. However, due to kidnap trend and other crimes that almost brought the city of Aba and its environs down, the take off was delayed till 2013.
This much was corroborated by the founder, “Landscaping work commenced in 2006, preparatory for actual take-off in September, 2007. All planned developments in TEDA were put on hold and no activity took place for the next three years because of the unfortunate kidnap incidents that enveloped the whole of Aba and its environs. However, following the combined efforts of the military and the police, the security situation improved late in 2010. But to the special grace of God, TEDA opened its doors to its first set of students in 2013 with only six students in JSS1.”
Establishing the school and nurturing it to growth in such a rural community that hitherto had inaccessible road and lacked virtually every social amenity can only take God’s benevolence and grace as well as man’s focus and hard work for this to happen. Sometime in October 2013, Pastor H.U. Anaba of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church had conducted what was termed the official first dedication service for TEDA with only six children as its pioneer students and staff strength of 23.
Dinneya told the students and other guests that through God’s blessing, the school which is growing rapidly now has over 700 students and still counting with over 64 staff strength. He stated that although TEDA is a self-supporting Adventist Junior and Senior Secondary School, but inasmuch as it has been giving back to society, that it has continued to benefit from the direct support, spiritual guidance and patronage of the Adventist Church in Nigeria particularly the Aba-East Conference of the Church.
In his address, the vice principal of the school, academics, Mr. Aleke Camenus told the new students to emulate the out gone 2016/2017 graduating students whom he described as not only bright and level-headed, but also respectful.
The vice principal, administration, Elder Okey Ojinka told the students that the school has a policy of 25 students per class for effective teaching and learning, hence the erection of a new 26 classroom brick block for TEDA junior school which has been put to use this September.
Ojinka said the dominant culture in the school is for students to achieve their dream of obtaining a holistic form of education premised on five planks of spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional and social order, stressing that it is for this reason TEDA goes for the best in staff recruitment
As the school expands, so has it stepped up its social responsibility by reconstructing and making the major road into the community which had remained dilapidated for years, now accessible all year round.