REVELATION FROM EDUCATION CONSULTANT:
• Johnson-Kanu and a Ukranian
Mrs. Onyeka Johnson-Kanu is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Citadel Education International Limited, a consultative and counseling institute that helps youths who want to further their education abroad to realize their dreams. A first degree holder from the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), she did her postgraduate in England and was a lecturer for over 12 years, at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU), Bauchi, before she retired and moved to Abuja to begin Citadel. And for three years, the institute had been in operation, she's been able to help a lot of young Nigerians to secure university admission abroad. In an interview with Daily Sun, Johnson-Kanu, who also runs a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that cater for widows and youth empowerment, shares with readers what it takes to study in Ukraine.
Excerpts:
Why study abroad?
Citadel Education International Limited is all about studying abroad and one might ask: why study abroad, why not in Nigeria? My answer is: we live in an interdependent world. Whatever is your dream, discover your desire, dream and destiny. Don't limit yourself. Go for the best; go for what you feel like doing. When I was young, when you watch films, there is always that interest to say, 'oh, these places I'm seeing, I will like to go there, I'll like to study there, I'll like to better myself, I'll like to be exposed.' What we are doing is to try to empower young people so that those who have that desire to study abroad, especially those who couldn't afford it, couldn't have dreamt of going there, will be able to get there.
We cater for those in that particular class, not only for those whose parents can really afford it. What we do here is to scout round the country, round the schools and find the accredited national institutions, get the fees especially those that are of low fees, if they are accredited by the Ministry of Education in Nigeria and then I come and look at the processes, liaise with the embassies to make sure that these young ones get these visas and realize their dream of studying abroad. Even during our orientation before they travel, we encourage them to be good ambassadors of Nigeria, to go there get the best out of the system and bring in those positive things they see over there and impact our society with them.
Qualifications for studying in Ukraine
Currently, we have our adverts running in all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria. We have adverts running in English/Hausa in Kano. It is running in English/Yoruba in Lagos and it's running in English/Igbo in Port Harcourt. Right now, it runs in the four languages in Abuja on Silverbird. So with that we expect that Citadel should be a household name when it comes to studying abroad because in this profession, you find out that there are so many, I wouldn't like to use the word 'fraudulent' but you hear a lot of disheartening stories. People are duped but when you come out to show yourself, to show what you can offer, you find out that not everybody will have that sort of confidence and guts to do that. You must be able to say, 'look, I'm transparent; I can do it and do it well.'
We have our criteria, just like the Nigerian universities have. To start with, you must to have your five credits including English Language and Mathematics. If you are going for the sciences especially Medicine, you must have Physics, Chemistry, Biology. If it is Engineering, you must have Physics, Chemistry and Further Mathematics or Technical Drawing. For the Arts or Social Science students, you must have credit in Government, Business Studies and Accounting. All these are the minimum requirements.
For the universities we cover and for Ukraine, the country we are actually working with at the moment, the standard is good and the fees are very affordable. Ukraine is a young country and they just opened their doors like all the other countries did because there was a time UK didn't ask for visa. There was a time America didn't ask for visa and all these countries wanted people to come in, including Canada. But as they grew and became stronger, they started limiting the people that could come in and study. So now we have an opportunity to study in Ukraine. They've opened their doors and the standard is good, especially in the field of Medicine and Engineering, the standard is very good.
You'll be surprised that most of the breakthroughs in Medicine in the former USSR came from Ukraine. For instance, the University I am representing now, my very first university, is the LVIV National Medical University, and this university is 258years old with a lot of breakthroughs in transplants as far back as then. And being one of the 10 national universities in Ukraine, you find out with qualifications coming from there, you have access to specialize in the US, UK or Canada, whichever you prefer. So it is a rare opportunity but people are not aware.
Going to study Medicine in UK now will cost you a minimum of 45,000 pounds for a year, compared to just $4500 dollars in LVIV. People are not aware and we are talking about Medicine. The standard is the same: it's the psychology of the colonial influence that you must have a UK certificate but when the doctors come back, we know that they are good. One of the students that came back two months ago just wrote the Nigerian Medical Association exams and passed it. He is presently working with University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Enugu.
Right now, I have two male and one female doctors from Ukraine helping out at the National Hospital here in Abuja. So products from Ukraine are working all over and if that is the case, why should it just be restricted to a few people? Why shouldn't others that are not so rich go there? You and I know how extremely difficult it is for most of the young ones to get admission here in Nigeria no matter their scores in the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
Many students would not have loved to go abroad to study, but when you write the JAMB first year, second year without any results, you begin to look for other alternatives. So this is why studying abroad is a good alternative because some of these schools incidentally are a bit cheaper than the private universities that we have here in Nigeria. But people are not aware, and the feeding cost is so low, the cost of living is quite affordable there.
Racism
When people say some countries are racists, my question is, where are you safe? In your village? In the North, South, East or West? Where are you safe? That is how the world is and since the world is like that, all I advise is wherever you find yourself in the world just make the best of the opportunity. If you are a boy, as long as you do not leave your studies and begin to run after girls, and if you are a girl as long as you do not compromise you integrity and begin to prostitute your body, you can survive.
If you mind your business, which is your studies, will mind you. Luckily they have very good hostels where the students can stay and do real serious studies. In fact, life over there is like a triangle; you move from the hostel to the lecture room and from the lecture room to the super market and back to the hostel.
Course of studies
One thing with Ukraine is that they have a system where you have various universities dedicated to various academic courses. For instance, you have University of Technology, University of Engineering, University of Economics, etc. So instead of having faculties they have specialized institutions. You can have 30,000 students for instance in the University of Medicine from all over the world. University of Engineering may have 20,000 students and it cuts across. And these institutions are big, very massive and they use the English Language as a medium of communication during lectures.
Recruitment drive
We send out adverts and people call me because of the adverts. We also go round some schools within Abuja, targeting SS 2, SS3 students. We organize a sort of mini- workshop for them in which we deliver presentations on what we do. Over time in many schools we visited, I have noticed that students in SS2, SS3 don't seem to be so keen because they feel they still have a chance to write JAMB. It is those that have written JAMB once or twice that are desperate and very interested about the program and that's how we get our responses.
And when we get, we invite and tell them what documents to bring which include their WAEC results, testimonials, international passports and their birth certificates. So when they bring that, they are registered. There's a form to fill out to register with us at Citadel. After that we now process, use those documents to send out to the schools for their admission letters. And if I travel, I come back with all the admission letters of those who applied. And, if for any reason, I don't take them with me when I am travelling, those working with me would scan and send them via the Internet.
Once the admission letters arrive, we start processing those documents they submitted in the first place through all the ministries in Nigeria. From the Ministry of Education, we go for the medical insurance at the Ministry of Health and we legalize all the documents at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We get the interview date but before then we have a mock interview in this office where we tell the applicants what to wear, how to dress what to say before we finally take them to the embassy. And when they get their visas, we buy the tickets for them. In fact, everything is packaged here. Before they travel, which they do in batches, they are made to undergo some orientation.
Fortunately for us, we are now registered and licensed in Nigeria as well as in Ukraine. We now have Citadel International, Nigeria Limited, and in Ukraine we are officially recognized by the Ministry of Education over there. So when you take a flight to Ukraine, there will be Citadel representatives in Ukraine who will be at the airport to pick you, register you, do all the protocol and you take it from there. We have been doing this for three years now but we need more to create more awareness so that young people will come because it pains me that there are many young people out there that do not know that this is possible, and they are stranded somewhere but if they are aware that this can be achieved I'm sure they won't be where they are today, totally frustrated.