Parents, not teachers, should be blamed for students’ moral failures –Obiesili, Director, Divine Wisdom Schools

From Obinna Odogwu, Awka

The Director of Divine Wisdom Schools in Awka, Anambra State capital, Chief Amaechi Obiesili, has blamed poor parenting for the low moral standards and behaviour among today’s young people, particularly the students.

He argued that it was unfair to heap the blame on teachers when parents have failed to bring up their children properly at home. He also spoke on a number of interesting issues in this interview

How has it been running this school? What have been the challenges and the success stories so far?

It has not been easy. This school started in 2011. I established it because of my love for children. I had always wanted to be in a position to guide and nurture them to greatness. Today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders. And I hold the view that our future leaders should be brought up properly today. So, that view and love for children made me establish this place. Incidentally, my father liked my idea and supported it. He encouraged me to go ahead and establish the school. But before then, I was selling cement and blocks. And my business was doing very well. I had a block industry. And I was getting two trailer loads of cement that time. That’s to tell you how big the business was; and it was progressing. But I sold off everything to establish this school. When I eventually started, I encountered a few challenges. Trying to establish a school is not a small journey; it’s not an easy thing at all. That time, there was a small building here and I rented it.

Shortly after, I started the fencing of this place using part of the money I realised from my previous business. Later on, I started building one structure but couldn’t complete it as quickly as I had expected because I ran out of funds. However, I kept pushing. The next challenge I faced was getting approval from the Ministry of Education. When officials from the ministry came here, they said that I must fence this school compound. It was a dwarf fence at the time, so I had to move it up with more blocks. I also renovated the small building to make it better and comfortable for teaching and learning. I did other things too. Those were the things I did to register the school and get approvals from the government. If you look at this wall, you can see when I got my approval for Day Care in 2012; you can see that of nursery; the other one is for primary. They have different certificates. You get approval for Day Care differently; the same for primary. This other one you are seeing there is for upgrading. Then I had to go for CAC. These are processes that were not easy.

From the story you just told, it’s obvious that at some point, you encountered serious financial challenges. How were you able to pull through them?

Yes, I encountered serious financial challenges at the early stage of this school. I started this school with only 11 pupils. And I had workers that must be paid every month. I had new building projects to execute. There were so many things that needed to be done to make this place better and you need money to be able to do that. So, how could 11 pupils provide money for the payment of staff salary, fencing of the school compound and the building of new classroom blocks? The situation became so tough that at a point I had to take loans. From that 2011, sometimes I took bank loans just to make sure that everything is moving well here. I took loans many times from the banks. Sometimes, I took two to three years’ loans just to make sure I financed this place. Running a school requires a lot of money. When you came here last, this place wasn’t like this. This time around we have started computer studies and opened a music department. Every term we must bring up something new. What makes me happier is the performance of our kids in external examinations. They get high scores. My daughter just gained admission into UNIZIK. She wrote St. Patrick’s exam and got over 90 per cent. She wrote UNIZIK’s entrance exam and passed very well. I had to choose UNIZIK. One got admission into the Nigerian military school in Zaria.