The Story Of Holy Child College, IKOYI

• CAROLINE OGBAJI, Deputy Head Teacher Of Snr. School Recounts

Mrs. Caroline Ogbaji, is the Deputy Head Teacher of Senior School and History teacher at Holy Child College Ikoyi. She has been in the school since 2001. She has a B.Sc in History and an M.Sc in Education Leadership and Financial Management.

She is a dedicated educator with a passion for self-development and also committed to empowering students and fostering growth in humanitarian and social work experience which she thrives in as a Rotarian.

A few days back, City People Journalist, BENPRINCE EZEH (08068599879) had a chat with her at the College’s 2024 Funfair and she explained why training a girl child in schools is important. Below are the excerpts from the chat.

Can you tell us a little story about Holy Child?

Okay. Holy Child College is an all-girls school and it was founded in 1945 by the Society of Holy Child Jesus. It is an all-girls school that believes in the totality of a child, ensuring that the girl child is given the education she needs, and not just the education, but treating the child as a child that will help the society in the future. So the philosophy of Holy Child entails the fact that we believe in the totality of the child, (ensuring that the talents, the intellects and affections of the child are moulded and are harnessed, so that the child or the girl child becomes a useful member of the society in the future and contributes her own quota to the society. And this has been on since 1945. Like I said, by next year, we’ll be 80 years old and we are celebrating it in style. So that’s basically what Holy Child is about. And to the great glory of God, the school has produced a lot of prominent names in the society. You know. We produced the first federal permanent secretary, late Francesca Emanuel, she was an old girl of Holy Child College. We also produced distinguished and renowned actors like Joke Silva, she’s also a part of Holy Child. We have Ibidun Allison, former Amebo of the Village Headmaster series, Sisi Clara, all these were people that passed through this school. And we have the recent ones, like Jemima Osunde. She’s also an artist who passed through this school. And we have the women of substance who are doing well in the engineering sector, in commerce, and you name it, you know. I’m proud to be part of this great family and I’ve been on it since 2001. This will be my 24th year in the school. I’m so honoured to have trained over 2,000 students who have passed through me. And if you go to my Facebook page, I have about 1,500 of them. I follow up on what they are doing and they are all excelling in their various life endeavours. So I’m really very happy that I’m part of this great family.

Like what you just said, being here for 24 years is not a day thing. So which position exactly are you holding in the school?

I started as a teacher here in 2001, but by the grace of God, I’ve risen to the height of the Deputy Head Teacher Senior School of this great institution. And I started with teaching history. Because I love the classroom, I’m still teaching history. Though I’m now a member of the management staff, I’m still teaching, this is because I believe in imparting knowledge to the students.

Something I noticed again is that students are not allowed to hold cash. They change it to voucher, can you tell us what informed that decision?

Yes, we decided to use vouchers to prevent one, their tickets, their money being stolen, accountability because we have different vendors who come in here to sell things. So we prefer that they collect the vouchers after which we’ll be the ones to give them their cash to encourage their uniformity and to also control what was sold and what was not sold.

As a girl child who has just been admitted to your school, what are the benefits Holy Child would give her?

In Holy Child College, academy is very important, your child must be sound, but we are not the type of school that require the child to be 80% in our admission. In fact, our pass mark is 60%. But we believe that intellectual or academic is not enough to move a child in this 21st century. So in Holy Child College, we harness the totality of that child. We talk about the academics, we talk about their psychomotor and their affective motor. We unleash the talent in that child. We see that every child is unique. If the child is not too strong in academics, she might be good in sports, she might be good in music. So whatever the child is good at, we bring it out. So that by the time the child leaves Holy Child, 6 years or three years after staying in Holy Child, she is useful to herself and the society at large. You don’t say that after going to university, you’re out of university, you don’t have a job. You can provide a job for yourself because you have been equipped with what it takes to be a past student of Holy Child college. And that is why a lot of our students are doing very well out there. And we expose them to various conferences. We go to conferences like the Model UN Conference in Abuja, in UK, in Switzerland and in France. Right now, we are planning a conference in Switzerland and France next year, April. And we are going to take a lot of students there. So we expose them to these things so that at the end of the day, they are complete and can hold their own so well, especially in this 21st century, where everyone has to be a global citizen. If you want to survive here, you need your critical thinking skills. You have to be digitally literate. You have to be a critical thinker. And you have to be able to be a problem solver. And these are the things we imbibe in our students.

For non-Christians, like Muslims, can they practice their own religion or would they be of this particular religion?

This is a Catholic Mission School. In admission, we ask the parents, what do you want from the college? they will say, we want a morally upgraded child, a child that has the fear of God. And we say, okay, you are a Muslim, so what do you want? This is a Christian school. How do you want to encourage your child to be a Muslim as well since this is a Catholic school? The truth is that we do everything the Catholic way here. Alright. We don’t enforce our Catholicism on any child. When it’s time for mass, every child goes for mass. When it’s time for procession, every child goes for that. We do everything. But we don’t force the child to change to a Catholic or a Christian. Alright. By the time the child is going through all these things in school, and the child says, hey, I would like to be a Catholic, we don’t even accept. We need to call the parents. We tell the parents; your child has shown interest that she wants to do this. Do you want her to go ahead? Some parents will say yes. Some parents will say no. And so we stay by it. We don’t force any child. But the thing is that this school is channelled towards the Catholic doctrine and our philosophy. And that’s what we follow. We have a lot of Muslims here; they don’t mind the philosophy we give them. But the thing is that we don’t change their religion. They can be what they want to be once they leave the walls of the school, and go home, they practice their Islam, they practice their Protestantism, whatever they believe in. We have a lot of Protestants here, Anglicans, Catholics. So we don’t discriminate. It’s just that we do our things in a Catholic way. Because it’s our school, that’s the way we run it.