My friend’s daughter once told her mum, “teacher said that nobody should go home and tell tales.” This was rather amusing coming from a six-year-old and her mum tried to probe further by asking, “Did anybody tell tales?”  “Yes now, Maureen told her mummy that teacher threw her glasses away and beat her on her bum bum when she didn’t even do anything.” My friend and I exchanged looks and realized the poor teacher had given them a talk because she had obviously heard what Maureen went home to tell her mum. Apparently Maureen had broken her third pair of glasses in ...

Mrs. Mary Agbu is a rare specie in our generation. She is mum to nine lovely children. Her first child is seventeen years old and the youngest is two. She is from a large family herself and is the fourth in a family of seven. Her father was a Director with Lever Brothers and she remembers living in the lively Surulere area of Lagos. She had a lot of fun growing up there and had both her Primary and Secondary education in Lagos ...

In Nigeria, the banking, religious and schooling sectors seem to have an infinite market capacity. For schools and other learning institutes the demand of Nigerians for accredited or formal study appears almost insatiable.  Yet, this yearning for more knowledge begs the question: does more teaching or instruction equate with more learning?   For parents that can afford it, the norm is now to send children as young as suckling babes to school: crèche or kindergarten. This innate urge to give our young the best start in life has its upside. For example, it has a positive impact ...