LAGOS – Bishop (Dr.) Tom Samson, one of Nigeria’s most enigmatic and charismatic preachers, is the presiding Bishop and General Overseer of Christ Royal Family International Church with its headquarters at Ikeja, Lagos. With over two decades in the vineyard, he has been doing great exploits and winning souls for God’s kingdom. His annual programme tagged, ‘It Is War’, has grown to become a phenomenal success since he started 19 years ago. Apart from running his flourishing ministry, many do not know that Bishop Samson is also an educationist, entrepreneur and philanthropist, who has invested heavily in education with over 10 secondary schools, college of education and a hospital in his kitty. The big news is that this incredibly gifted man of God has officially established a university, adding this huge feather to his long list of accomplishments. This new citadel of learning is called Monarch University, located at Iyesi-Ota, Ogun state. Admission is now open to the public and from information available to the Sunday Independent, there has been a big rush for admission to the school. And that’s not a surprise in itself. Those who are conversant with Bishop Samson, know that he is a stickler for quality and standard. He does not do things in half measures. He is a firm adherent to the phrase, ‘Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.’ This is why many parents are now taking their kids to Monarch University, confident that the man of God will not compromise on quality, but will certainly bring in trained and quality personnel to the institution to nurture the students and transform them into men and women of substance. From the brilliance of the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Monarch University, Prof. Olaleke Ogunnaike, and other top executives of Monarch University, who spoke at a media event to officially present the institution to the public, there was no doubt that Bishop Samson had assembled the best hands to run the university. According to the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Prof. Olaleke, “At Monarch University, our curriculum is well crafted because we have our own goal, we have our own vision, and we have our own mission. “And we believe that at the end of the four years, we are going to produce graduates that will go out there and not just morally robust, not just spiritually developed, but they have the entrepreneurial acumen. “They go out there not just as job seekers, but as employers of labor. As a way of being specific, our mission, the mission statement of the university, is to produce knowledgeable and skilful graduates that are equipped through functional education, value reorientation to effectively harness the environment and act as a catalyst for the development of Nigerian society and humanity at large. “We are not shying away from the fact that we are a Christian university, and we are saying in the agenda of God, what we say is the earnest expectation, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. And it is not only by spiritual development, we are saying even man is trepidatory in nature. “So, while we are looking at this issue, we believe strongly that even the mind must be properly equipped so that it will go there and manifest, just as the Bible has said. “And our vision of the university is to be a university that provides opportunities for the inculcation of academic excellence and positive value, value reorientation through acquisition, conservation, dissemination and application of knowledge for the production of globally competitive graduates. “Monarch University has a state-of-the-art equipment and breathtaking infrastructural facilities that are very impressive to visitors.” He continued: “All we are saying is that our curriculum is so robust, tilting heavily on entrepreneurship. And when we talk about entrepreneurship, we are talking about the fact that our curriculum has been crafted in such a way that we take people through the entrepreneurial process.” As he put it, “When you generate business ideas, how do I announce these ideas and verify these ideas to become opportunity? Take advantage of the opportunity. “All these have been properly integrated into our curriculum. And if you look at our courses, we have a good number of courses that are deliberately put together because of what we are out to do. “Now we have accounting, we have entrepreneurship, we are going to run business economics, banking and finance, criminology and security studies, sociology, mass communication, business administration. “All of these belong to a faculty that we call Faculty of Humanities, Management and Social Sciences. “Then we have the second faculty, we call it the Faculty of Basic and Applied Science. Those are the two faculties we are starting with. And under that, we have the following programmes. “We have Biotechnology, which will be under the Department of Biological Sciences. And then we have Data Science, we have Cyber Security, we have Computer Science, we have Software Engineering, we have Information Technology.”