By Ugochukwu Alaribe

The management of Rhema University, Aba, Abia State, has said it accepts about three instalments for tuition fees to encourage indigent students to acquire quality education.

The university also stated that it offers scholarships, jobs and free medical care as part of its social responsibility to its host community.

Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Ogbonnaya Onwudike, who stated this in Aba while reacting to the belief that private Universities are out of the reach of the indigent people, explained that the institution has devised some measures to ensure indigent students are not deprived of qualitative education because of money.

He disclosed that the Rhema University which was founded in 2009 by the Living Word Ministries and admitted its first set of students in 2010 with two colleges has produced seven sets of graduates.

Onwudike, who is a former Vice-chancellor of the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, urged the federal government to extend tertiary education trust fund, Tetfund, support to private universities to assist in ensuring qualitative education for students.

He said; “The tendency is for private Universities to be perceived as being out of the reach of the ordinary people. But here, we have instituted some measures to ensure that those desirous of qualitative education are not deprived because of lack of finance.

“We also allow people to pay instalments if they don’t have all the money to pay at a time. We can allow you to pay in three instalments. This reduces the pressure on parents. Besides, many students are on the scholarship books of some public-spirited individuals. This is in addition to our robust pursuit of our corporate social responsibilities, particularly to our host communities. We strive to carry them along through some friendly policies, the bottom line being that we don’t want financial constraints to prevent people’s access to qualitative education.

“Rhema University is owned by the Ministry. What the ministry does is that several people who are well-to-do in the church offer scholarships to some number of students whom they pay for. They discuss with the ministry and pick some students whom they pay for. Even the ministry, on its own, offers scholarships to students. Most students have been trained through school free of charge. We have made some impacts in the area of education, what is most important to us is training people who will help society with good morals because you can achieve too many PhDs without morals. This doesn’t help the society.

 “We run 20 academic programmes which are fully accredited. Our facilities are comparable to what you find in many other universities, modest as they are. From outside, you may not know, you have such facilities here. By God’s grace, we have continued to move forward, we started with just two colleges; we started with two colleges- Colleges of Basic and Applied Sciences and that of Management and Social Sciences. Later, we added the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, with medicine and Surgery on top of our academic programmes. The medical students are in their 4th year now. Nursing students are in the 5th year. We have had 8 sets of graduates. Next year or two, we will be able to produce our first set of medical doctors.

“Private universities also need support from Tetfund. Unfortunately, the federal government doesn’t extend Tetfund support facilities to private universities. We have argued about this many times because we are all producing for the same society and market. Such support should also be made available to the private universities to enable them to develop their facilities in the training of students who will also serve the nation.”