Charterhouse: Paying N42 Million To Learn ABC -By Abdulkadir Salaudeen

At times, the more we think we have advanced as modernized people, the more we lose our sanity. If you think paying N42 million to learn ABC gives you some pride, it means you need an emergency psychiatric service from a team of psychiatrists. Richness of the pocket is indeed different from sanity of the mind. I hope we can all take note. Do we call this a display of wealth by the wealthy—to spite the wealthless—or financial recklessness? I am struggling to come to terms with this.

A primary school in Lagos has been in the eye of the storm since last week. The school is named Charterhouse. It is a private-owned British school newly opened in Lagos and it is said to be its first in Africa. It charges N42m as school fees per annum for each primary school pupil. Before a parent is qualified to pay that huge sum of money, they must first pay a non-refundable registration fee of N2 million only.

While many cringe at the huge sum to be paid as school fees in Charterhouse, the school management asks them to shut their mouth and mind their business. After all, parents who are willing to pay are not complaining. The school’s director of Communications, Admissions and Marketing, Mr Damilola Olatunbosun said:

“Charterhouse is not just like every other school anywhere globally but a prestigious and value-driven world-class educational institution that parents who love quality and second to none education will always want their children to be.”

This explanation should sound either sickening or convincing. It depends. It will sound plausible to rich parents who lack financial intelligence because they had never done any real work to justify their wealth. It should also sound well to those whose ill gotten wealth has caused a serious mental damage. When the only value the wealthy possess is their wealth, don’t ask for their sanity. Parents like Yahaya Bello—the first ever declared wanted “White Lion” in Nigeria—should have his children in Charterhouse.

If there is truth in the allegation that he paid almost a billion naira as his child’s school fees (in advance) while leaving office as governor, parents like him should feel bitter and ask why Charterhouse does not charge a higher fee. To him, and his ilk, N42 million would be miserably ridiculous. It will amount to shame that after starving public schools of the needed funds in their states in their capacities as rulers, they still could not get their children schooled in schools where billions of naira are paid.
However, the poor would find Mr Olatunbosun’s justification for the outrageous school fees sickening. Because we (the poor) still use our thinking cap, we expected him to say: “Charterhouse is not just like every other school anywhere in the globe. Its teachers are matchless. We have successfully cloned Pythagoras, Albert Einstein, and Isaac Newton to teach Mathematics, particularly arithmetics. ABC—the foundational alphabets of English language—is taught by William Shakespeare and Lindley Murray, using the most modern method. Other newly introduced subjects are taught by most qualified angels who were recruited (and will continue to be recruited) from their abode in Heaven.

“Not only that, the school nannies, cooks, and cleaners are maids from Paradise. Its gatekeepers are tamed tigers and lions— including some white lions. In addition, anything learnt in the school can never be forgotten. Pupils in Charterhouse will be trained to be the most intelligent people in the world by virtue of being taught by angels.”

When would the so called Nigerian capitalists realize that capital flight of this gargantuan proportion kills the economy of their motherland? In case some of us do not realize, many Nigerian graduates who work as civil servants might not earn N42 million as their accumulated salaries through out their entire 35-year-working-career. That is what is paid as annual school fee for a primary school pupil elsewhere in the same country. The rich are really creating a new world for themselves.
The school expressed its plan to have secondary school soon. Perhaps it is also planning to have a university. A kid who will be attending this school up to the secondary level would need to gulp up to (or almost) a billion naira from the vault of their parents. If these school fees are meant to be investment with expectation of returns in monetary terms, it is most likely a fruitless investment. Which company, institution, agency—private or public—would these kids work to earn a salary that will enable them to recoup the money spent on their education? Even if they end up in politics which is the most lucrative business in Nigeria today, they would have to loot public treasury with an exceptional mercilessness.

Though the rich have the right to spend their money the way they like, but these kids, despite the millions of naira spent on them to learn ABC, will end up writing WAEC, NECO, and UTME along with the children of the poor. Unfortunately for them, after being taught by best teachers among the “angels” in the best environment that is next to Heaven, the standard of questions by the examination bodies mentioned above will be the same all over Nigeria. That is to say, in the final stage, students who are taught under trees will not be different from those in Charterhouse. What is more, overall best students hardly emerge from these so-called globally unrivalled schools.

While the rich have every right to spend N42 million for their kids to learn ABC, the poor should also have every reason to thank God that their kids could learn ABC perfectly under trees in schools where classes do not exist due to government neglect over the years. In other words, our kids in primary one do not need Charterhouse to learn ABC. If the rich are not comfortable reading this article, they should use their position to influence government policy on national examination bodies such that the rich will be writing different exams; not the ones written by the poor.

The rich I am referring to are those who want to create a different world from the poor. Of course, there are many well-to-do Nigerians who love the poor and do not ridicule the poor by messing themselves up with affluence induced display of insanity. May we have many of them.

Father Arrested for Impersonating Son

This is how some desperate parents who want “best” education for their children messed up themselves. They could spend any amount to enroll their children to expensive schools. It doesn’t matter to them if their wards learn something tangible or not. It doesn’t also matter to them if these schools have standard or not. That is to say there are truly expensive schools who deserve the word expensive because of their standard—I am not in any way referring to Charterhouse.

If parents spent on their children for six years in primary school and another six years in secondary school and yet their wards could not write WAEC or JAMB by themselves to pass, is that not a failed investment? To some Nigerian parents, it is not. For such parents, because they are literally stupid, they would still need to pay what they call “examination runs fee” in some miracle centers for their children to pass. Since that seems not to be possible with this new JAMB regime under the quintessential registrar called Professor Oloyede, a father resorted to impersonating his child to write UTME. What a stupid father’s love for a child!

If they both end up in prison, who shall we blame? The father or the son or both? Who should call the other criminal in prison? The father or the son? If they are both criminals, who learnt criminality from whom? What a shame!

Abdulkadir Salaudeen
salahuddeenabdulkadir@gmail.com