In 2004, the founder of Medmina College relocated to Lagos. Being a parent who believes that education is the best legacy for any child, he set out to get very good schools for his young children. To his dismay, he discovered a very grim vacuum in the education sector in Lagos and its environs: there were no good schools that could take care of his children’s needs as Nigerian Muslims.
None of the schools he visited had any provision for the kind of integrated education that would make a good citizen of the Nigerian child without eroding his spiritual needs. The problem here was that while Muslim children get western education in the good schools available, their religion is ignored or deliberately undermined in such a way that they grow up feeling inadequate as Muslims and eventually renouncing their faith later in life.
It is an accepted fact that no education is complete in these parts of the world without sound moral and religious upbringing. Though most of the good schools in Lagos and its environs provide moral and religious education, none provides Islamic religious training. In fact, most of them do not even teach Islamic Religious Knowledge!
For the founder, this was unacceptable. He took up the issue with a number of friends and soon discovered that most Muslim parents suffer a great dilemma. He found out that these parents wish to give their children the best education possible without compromising their Islamic faith. But because there are no schools that can take care of these two very important needs, many of them end up enrolling the children in schools that are committed to providing education and winning souls for non-Islamic religions. Most of these parents see the choice before them as a very difficult one; more like choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea.
