Olukoya blames cost of faith-based varsities for members’ exclusion

General Overseer of the Mountain of Fire and Miracle (MFM), Prof Daniel Olukoya, has disclosed that the exorbitant costs of running tertiary institutions in the country have made it difficult for members of religious bodies to send their children and wards to faith-based universities.

According to the MFM founder, a large amount of the revenue of the Mountain Top University, Ogun State, owned by the church, has always been channelled into energy generation to power the operations of the institution.

Olukoya stated this at the weekend when he was conferred with an honorary doctoral degree in management by the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA).

According to him, the situation is beyond the proprietors of private universities and the only weapon that can find a lasting solution to the security and economic challenges in the country is prayer.

Olukoya said: “It is not the fault of those proprietors. I am one of them. I am always at the back of the poor because I know how difficult it was for me to get to university. My parents didn’t have the money.

“But then the current situation states that if you cannot pay good money to the lecturers or the professors, you won’t get good teachers. And if you run a private university and you are paying less than the federal universities, you will not get good professors.

“So, it is the financing and paying the salaries. And that is the situation now, power. To run a university on a generator is a lot of money. In our university, most of the money goes to diesel. It is now we are installing solar.”

Meanwhile, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) worldwide, Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, has called on Nigerians to always remember they are pilgrims on earth.

He also decried the loss of values, and absence of righteousness in the society, saying that they were signs of end time.

He spoke, yesterday, during the monthly thanksgiving service at RCCG headquarters (The Throne of Grace), Ebute-metta, where he ministered on the theme, “My Father’s House” and also prayed for tenants, landlords, landowners and their families.

Adeboye said: “The moment you are born, you begin your journey back home. We are on a pilgrimage and this is the reason people will not ask you how young is your child but how old.

“The weight of it is that you have only one destination to pick out of the two destinations available for every man, both the wealthy and the struggling.”