FORMER Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Management Service) of Babcock University, Ilishan, Remo, Ogun State, Professor David Babalola has called on the leaders of Seventh-day Adventist Church in Nigeria to establish more nursery, primary and secondary schools in he country. According to him, the gospel would survive better and faster if people could read and write. Babalola, a professor of Church History, made the call while delivering the first inaugural lecture of Babcock University entitled: Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Nigerian Since 1914: An Impact Analysis recently. He noted that the church was one of the protestant churches that were planted in Nigeria in the early part of the 20th century. According to him, Elder David Babcock was the first Seventh-day Adventist Missionary in Nigeria. Babcock and his family, he narrated, were missionaries in Sierra Leone before coming to Nigeria on March 7, 1914. He observed that the three major tools for Adventist evangelical endeavours were the introduction of formal education, the preaching of the word with various methods and the establishment of medical institutions. On the link between the church and Christian Education in Nigeria, Babalola noted that the role, played by Christian missionaries in bringing Western education to Nigeria could not be over-emphasised. According to him, when Babcock later left for Shao, Kwara State, he opened a village school in 1915 that developed in 1918 into the first Seventh-day Adventist formal school in Nigeria, where the early Adventist workers were trained. Shao, he explained, became the training ground for both pastors and teachers. However, the school at Shao collapsed and the mission moved it in 1928 to Oke-Bola, Ibadan, Oyo state. The Adventist primary schools, he noted, remained the only schools available for the communities of Erunmu in Oyo State, Otun, Ipoti and Ikun in Ekiti State, Jengre in Plateau State, Elele in Rivers State and many communities in Ngwaland in Abia State. Babalola also said that the quest for the establishment of a post secondary institution by Adventist Church, led it to a large expanse of land, about 370 acres, at IlishanRemo, Ogun State in mid August 1957 by a search team led by Gordon Ellstrom, the then President of West Nigeria Mission, Oke-Bola, Ibadan and Roger Coon, the then director of the Voice of Prophecy Bible correspondence school of West Africa, both in Nigeria. According to him, on June 4, 1958, the West African Union Mission Committee gladly voted to acquire the present Babcock University landed property for a period of a lease arrangement, renewable after a period of 99 years. He said that on September 17, 1959, the Adventist College of West Africa (ACWA) was born.In 1976, he added, the name Adventist College of West Africa (ACWA) renamed Adventist Seminary of West Africa (ASWA), to prevent the take-over of the institution by the Federal Government of Nigeria during the oil boom. In 1999, he reasoned, ASWA was eventually, renamed after the self-sacrificing American Visionary Missionary David Babcock whose 1914 mission had providentially preceded Nigerias Lugardian amalgamation into a country.
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