HISTORY
Anitan Christian Academy (ACA) is a dream come true. It is a school borne out of my care for my mother and compassion for the under-privileged children in the society. During one of my visits to Nigeria, particularly in the year 2014, God dropped the vision in my heart.
My mother is into full-time ministry and lives in her Church/Mission House at Challenge, Ibadan, Nigeria. On this particularly beautiful day during the trip
to Nigeria, I met her all alone by herself in this large compound. While we were chatting, we decided to walk around.
Obviously those resident in the mission house had all gone out to work leaving the woman in her 90s on her own. I brought up the idea that we could start a Day School in the Sunday school classroom of the Mission House since it’s only
being put to use on Sundays only, while the compound will also be busy during the school hours thus keeping her company.
She was pleasantly surprised. She beamed with delight at my suggestions and considered it a wonderful idea. I sprung into action Immediately. I contacted two relatives who are trained teachers and who had been in search of jobs for a while. My mum added another room to the Sunday school room, thus giving us two rooms to start with. We advertised the school among the locals and in her Christ Apostolic Church, Oke-Iyinlogo, with flyers and words of mouth. Tolu, my niece who was the first teacher named the school, ‘God’s Heart School.’
Few years later, in 2017, my daughter who is the last child of my family was getting married in Nigeria. While the preparation was ongoing in the United Kingdom, I had a dream of this plot of land I acquired in 1984 which had been lying fallow for a long time not knowing what to do with it. In my dream, I saw that a fish farm was constructed on it. There were different sections and different species of fish. They were separated according to their sizes. There were also pipes flowing with water that connected the different sections together.
It was a beautiful and happy environment in that dream. As happy as I was, I said in exclamation, ‘So this land is meant for fishery all these years!’ Thereafter, I woke up but I still remembered my last statement. I got up and prayed about the revelation, and the Holy Spirit dropped something in my heart saying:
“This place is for you, The Fishers of Men, where there will be different classes of children according to their ages.’’
I shared the revelation with my mother. As usual, as an old-time religious woman of strong faith, she said, ‘’what are you waiting for? When you finish the wedding of your daughter on Saturday, inaugurate the school on the open ground on Monday making your trip to Nigeria one for two celebrations.’’ And that was exactly what we did.
Today, ACA is now in two locations, having School 1 in Challenge Area and School 2 which is the headquarters at Sanyo, Ibadan.
The Name: By the time we wanted to register the name of the school, ‘God’s Heart School’ officially at the Corporate Affairs Commission, the government discovered that there was already a similar name, therefore, we had to change the name to ANITAN CHRISTIAN ACADEMY, to the glory of God!