AUSPHINE SCHOOL CLOSURE: THE REAL TRUTH

BY MRS. Josphine. E. OMOKHUALE

The ultimate, voluntary close down of Ausphine School in Kugbo, Abuja, in December 2024, was the culmination of a process and series of events that officially started on July 26, 2024 when the Proprietors convened a PTA meeting to announce their intention to close down the school. Subsequently, other meetings were held to discuss options that later proved unviable to prevent the closure, which was eventually carried out without violating the Guidelines issued by the Department of Quality Assurance,

Education Secretariat, FCT and with uncommon respect and regard for the pupils, parents and staff of the school. Apart from the meetings where the action was discussed, the management of the school disseminated information to the parents, especially those who were absent at the meetings, through the School’s WhatsApp platform, wherein most of the reasons for the decision were again provided. Most importantly, the proprietors’ promise, which was motivated by their deep empathy with parents, to provide financial assistance to parents to smoothen their transition to other schools, and request for parents’ bank details, were also provided in the WhatsApp messages. The financial assistance was a refund of part of first term fees for school uniforms for pupils that joined the school in September 2024, and a proportion of the cost of books for all pupils of the school. Incidentally, before the widely publicised story, 70.4% of the pupils had benefitted and no parent complained about the mode of closure. Moreover, all the staff have been paid terminal benefits and, along with some parents, benefitted from the disposal of the school’s assets, including computer systems, printers, furniture items, etc. However, when the story was disseminated in the press, the author deliberately omitted all the details of the close down that were contained in the messages.

The story of the closure was, solely, brought to the public domain by Barr. Titus Terfa Agundu, the Chairman of the PTA, who often spearheaded resistance to school fees increase, and one of the school’s debtors that caused the school’s inability to generate enough income to cover its expenses. He used a Reporter, who is his relation, to broadcast lies about the closure through many news outlets. The reporter, who boasted that he was in the FCT Minister’s Press Corps and would take the story to the Honourable Minister and all news outlets, called my husband about the story, but when he gave him our lawyer’s number to hear our own side of the story, he refused to call the lawyer and, thereafter, carried out his threat of circulating the unverified story.

Barr Titus Terfa Agundu was the only complainant and so-called “parents” that purportedly are stranded and confused by the closure of Ausphine School. He deliberately and mischievously withheld facts about the buildup to the closure, distorted facts, and fabricated AI-enabled lies to deceive the public and win unwarranted sympathy. As a proof, the procedure for voluntary closure of private schools including Notification, Student Welfare, Staff Compensation and Asset Disposal, which he claimed are contained in Guidelines from the Ministry of Education and the National Minimum Standards and Establishment of Institutions Act, are not from those sources. He obviously generated the information from AI because if you ask for the procedure for voluntary closure of private schools in the FCT through AI, you will get similar information, which AI called “general guide” during my search. It is shocking that a lawyer who should be a lighthouse of integrity would fabricate provisions that do not exist in Guidelines issued by the government. Another mendacious action of Barr Agundu was the use of a Gloria Jonadab, said to be another distraught parent in the story. Ausphine School never had a parent by that name throughout its operation. Since all other parents resisted his overtures and refused to be complicit in his illicit motive to malign us, he decided to rent a fake parent to lend credence to his concocted story. Also, even though he is the source of the story, Barr Agundu portrayed himself as one of the aggrieved parents, whereas he is the only one. It was the same way he was clandestinely creating and migrating from one WhatsApp group to another, to recruit and incite other parents to join him in protesting the school closure, and to refuse submission of the bank details for the refunds being made to parents. His footprints are all over WhatsApp and, although he lately started deleting all his chats with us and his fellow parents, Ausphine School operations were high in IT application and we have a rich treasury of his chats. Some of the chats, including where he boasted to parents that he would deal with us as he dealt with Ave Maria University in 2022, will be made available to you.

The closure of Ausphine School was due to its inability to generate enough income to cover its expenses over the eight years it operated, resulting in the proprietors’ reliance on their personal resources to keep the school going. The reason for this was that the fees charged for the very high standard of education it imparted only grew from N20,000 in 2017 to N25,000/N30,000 in 2024, for Nursery/Primary school pupils of the school. School fees could not grow and the little we charged could not be collected promptly or completely because:

1) many parents resisted increases and would withdraw their children completely if they considered fees unduly high,

2) many parents paid fees in multiple installments, months after school resumption, including Barr Agundu the complainant,

3) many parents owe fees, which were carried forward from term to term, including Barr Agundu the PTA Chairman.

Indeed, as at today, Barr Agundu is still owing the school for the Robotics and AI/Coding class for which he registered his daughter, Doose Matilda, as you will see in the documents accompanying this release. The school introduced this program to push the pupils into the future of the education age, and paid an external facilitator to deliver the programme but it was optional and the only pupils that attended were those whose parents consented, and Barr Agundu registered his daughter for it. There are pictures and videos of his daughter attending the class but he was the only parent that didn’t pay the fee for the programme. Therefore, while he is clamouring for full refund of first term school fees, he is actually owing the school for that first term. We never collected fees beyond one term at a time and so, the claim of paying fees that covered the whole session is wholly false, deceptive and formulated to portray us in bad light.

The most beguiling thing about Barr Agundu, a lawyer (?), is taking three divergent actions simultaneously on the same matter: making demands on the proprietors of the school through the letter purportedly written by his lawyers; sending the same letter to the press to defame and embarrass us without hearing from us yet; and asking the Education Secretariat of the FCT to take action against us. Thus, he feels justified to attack us based on his presumption that we violated his fabricated closedown “procedure”. Although we briefed our lawyers, O. J. Aboje and Co. to respond to him, he parried every effort the lawyers made to have a meeting with him. We shall, in due course, seek proper redress for his defamation.

Throughout the eight years we ran the school, I, the Proprietress never earned any salary; I didn’t collect the full cost of fueling my private car I used to run the school’s business; we didn’t pay rent on our private building we used for the school; we didn’t pay my husband for the air-conditioned bus he bought for the school’s use; we didn’t repay most of the loans my husband gave to the school to pay salaries and other costs, or pay for the various equipment he bought and maintained for the school; and, finally, we NEVER took any profit from the school because there never was any. Everything we did in Ausphine School was a labour of love, service and charity to humanity, which we do not regret and, if we have the opportunity or resources, we could do again.

I wish to commend the officials of the Department of Quality Assurance in the Education Secretariat of the FCT, who not only gave us quality supervision but went way beyond the call of duty to encourage us, guide us step-by-step, and nurture us over the years. Unfortunately, however, the high educational standard we took to Kugbo was way ahead of its time in the environment; this is why we could not strive there. Nevertheless, it was our pleasure to have made some impact in the lives of our pupils and we enjoin them to carry throughout their lives the motto of the school and continue to “Be the Light of the World”.

This is a summary of the true story of Ausphine School closure. I will publish the full story in a subsequent release.

Thank you.