Ebi Obaro, a certified Canadian Immigration, and Education Consultant is the brain behind Maple Education Canada Inc., the foremost provider of Canadian Immigration and Education Consulting Services in Nigeria. Due to her unparalleled wealth of experience, she was able to build Maple into a formidable company. With over 20 years of experience working with students and immigrants to Canada, she founded Maple Canadian College after careful evaluation of the experiences and needs of international students in Canada. In this interview with MARY NNAH, she bares her mind on her consistency in building an international brand through her various ventures and also on the scholarships she is offering to deserving Nigerian students who desire to study abroad

What was the vacuum that you saw that gave birth to Maple Canadian College?

It’s not by chance that I got involved in Canadian education. I didn’t stumble across it. My family comprising seven of us, five children inclusive, migrated to Canada 25 years ago. So, having had our five children go through Canadian education – some from elementary school and all of them through secondary school and university, in 2000 I had the idea of promoting Canadian education in Nigeria. The idea came from the fact that having had our children go through Canadian education; one could see the gap in the Nigerian education curriculum.

So we established Maple Canadian College (MCC) about 20 years ago to recruit Nigerian students to Canadian schools. Over a while, we discovered something about our Nigerian students which was that they were struggling in school.

The difference in the syllabus was beginning to show, especially in English and Sciences. We all claim that we studied English from primary school but there are a whole lot of differences when it comes to the quality of English that we know and then students had a lot of problems with their writing skills. So Nigerian students who got into Canadian universities found it difficult to write, and there is usually a lot of research and writing of papers they do. But today, our students find English different even though it was difficult for them in the first two years but now we have been able to get them to do very well in English.

Apart from that, Sciences and Mathematics were also difficult.  I remember once when the then Nigerian Ambassador to Canada challenged me over 15 years, that why don’t we open a Canadian school in Nigeria so that Nigerian students at that early age, most of who are 16 years old, can do the grade 12 programme in Nigeria before going to university Canada because we could see a lot of them who were struggling and have become disillusioned; they were failing. And there was a lot of concern from their parents that their kids were not doing well and they could not understand why. 

So, that challenge was there for so many years and at that time I didn’t see us having a school but a time came when we decided to do this, so we set up Maple Canadian College to bridge that gap between the Nigeria secondary school syllabus and the Canadian high school curricular.

Our vision is to become a model of innovative teaching and academic achievement across the world and our mission is to provide a world-class Canadian education to highly motivated students to set them on the best path to achieving their academic and professional goals in top choice global universities and colleges. So our certificates are not issued in Nigeria, they are from Canada.

 If you were to chronicle the experience so far, how would you describe it?

The journey started seven years ago, first, we needed to get land and also build a purpose-built infrastructure that is world-class. That took a lot of courage to achieve. Once we achieved that, in 2019 we had our first set of students.

You know what it means to start a new business – there was this anxiety and worries about how it was going to turn out and if we were going to break even but the focus wasn’t the money.

The focus was on the benefits of bringing Canadian education to Nigeria at a much more affordable cost for parents and for also the children to get more mature before going thousands of miles away. We had a Canadian principal the first year. That cost us a lot but we had to do it. And we had 24 students in our first year. I thought we would have more but I was told that school doesn’t start big but starts small and that the number we started with wasn’t bad. That gave us some comfort and we went on with that. Our entire students succeeded. They did extremely well. Some had an average of 92 per cent and above. They got into top universities and won scholarships. Canadian universities offer scholarships based on academic excellence, you don’t even apply for them. It is like they award you for passing their exams. We were very excited about this outcome.

The good thing about Canadian schools is that they give admission after the first semester. They don’t wait till the end of the programme. The first semester is five months so at the end of the five months, once we get their first semester results, we apply to universities, we get the admission, and we start their visa processing. Almost all our students got their visas and for those who didn’t, we reapplied and they got their visas. 

We had a 99 per cent success for Canadian visas while some went to the UK and America. So the first year was very encouraging not only with the admission but with the visa success rate. In our second year, our number doubled. That was more encouraging. The same thing happened as in the first year. 

Our students did very well and got into various universities. Some got admission into six or seven universities. As I said, university admission in Canada is based on grades. They don’t care where you come from.

Our teachers, I must confess, caught on, understood the curriculum, and were able to teach it effectively because they were also trained from day one by our partner institution in Canada, Rosedale Academy, Ontario, Canada.  They are trained physically here in Lagos.

This is our third set of students and over 90 per cent have already had admissions. We have started the visa processing and I believe that just like the set before them, they would also get their study permits.

What is your relationship with Rosedale Academy, Ontario, Canada?

You cannot set up a Canadian institution offshore without the support of another Canadian school in Canada. So, we had to partner with Rosedale Academy in Toronto to be able to set up this school here in Nigeria.  What Rosedale Academy does is give us the curriculum, which is blended – it is blended in the sense that it is online. Every student here has a laptop. Our teachers physically do the teaching while they all have partner Canadian teachers in Canada, working hand in hand with our teachers in Nigeria to ensure that we meet the Canadian standard. Getting Rosedale Academy was the most difficult thing that we had to overcome before we started school. Our students’ assignments, tests, theses, and exams are not marked here. Our teachers in Nigeria only teach and make sure that our students understand, do their assignments, and submit them to our partner school in Canada. 

We gather that Maple College in collaboration with Canadian Universities has some scholarship opportunities for Nigerian students. How do people take advantage of this?

The first of these scholarships was offered to a student who got over $200,000 scholarship in a U.S university. So, this year, Maple Canadian College and its partner school, Rosedale are offering three scholarships – one full and two partial for students to study at Maple Canadian College.

 The scholarship covers residence, meals, uniforms, and various other things. And it is worth over 20,000 Canadian dollars which is equivalent to about N6.6 Million. Then scholarships are for students who have finished grade 11 and want to transition into a grade 12 school or students who have already completed their year 12 and have finished WAEC and need to fill a gap before the transit outside of Nigeria or students who are finishing their grade 12 this year. So, it is not for pot-graduate students. Even if a student does not qualify to get the aforementioned scholarships, there is the possibility of them getting a scholar into any of the Canadian universities at the end of the programme based on their academic excellence.

In the previous year, students got over 600,000 dollars in scholarships, and this year, we have over 500,000 dollars in scholarships for the students presently in Maple Canadian College presently in different universities in the world. So this is an opportunity for a scholarship for Maple Canadian College or any of the universities around the world.

How have you been able to manage teenagers by molding their character and intellectual considering the pressure that comes with adolescence?

When you think of Nigerian education, we all know that there are gaps in the curriculum.  Sometimes you find out that the curriculum has nothing to do with reality. There is always the need to transfer what is learned in class to what is done in the real world. 

That was really for us the greatest challenge. Having to come here, go through the Canadian curriculum and then apply the knowledge, is the greatest challenge that they have had to overcome.  Another thing is that they haven’t learned how to do things timely, so when deadlines are set, there is usually a challenge to meeting the deadline. 

These are the things they go through in the first few months, struggling to meet deadlines. When you miss deadlines in the Canadian curriculum, there is a penalty for it. You tend to lose marks once your deadline has passed. So, we had to get them to understand the need to meet deadlines and ensure that their works are ready on time and that they had the privilege of showing their works to their teachers here in Nigeria before they submit them to their Canadian teachers.   

They also had big issues with plagiarism. There is no framework put in place for plagiarism in the Nigerian curriculum. So, a child does not know that copying and pasting without citing sources is a crime whereas there is no tolerance for plagiarism in the Canadian curriculum and even in the western world and so they had a lot of academy integrity issues at the beginning and there are stages to handling those academic issues with Rosedale and the Canadian curriculum as they would usually begin to catch in on what is required of them within a few months here.

You mentioned that Nigeria’s curriculum does not meet up with standards. What are your suggestions on how it could be improved to meet the international standards?

It has also always been my concern. When a child passes through our Nigerian system and they go straight into a foreign university, they are faced with so many academic challenges out there and those were the major reason that Maple Canadian College was established. Nigeria’s education system does not correlate with real life. 

Unfortunately, everybody is passing through the same system, including teachers. And so the tendency is that the outcome will always be the same. The people teaching and those receiving end up the same. So there is a need for training. I am not in the school of thought that we should take up another person’s education system. I think that what we have is robust but we need now to put some extras at it – a review. 

There is no time when we review and when even the review is going to take place, it is not done by educationists but by people outside of the education sector who have a clue of what is happening inside. So if this review is going to be done and done with the intent to improve the outcome, then educationists need to sit down, look at our curriculums, look at real-life and find a way to put some balance into what the students are learning.

And then infuse technology. There is no education without technology, so we need to infuse technology from the grassroots – the primary so that they are not left behind because when they go outside, they are left behind. And a lot of students now do the extra. Those who want their children to study abroad, actually go the extra mile to do something more for their children, so that they are not left behind if they go outside. 

That struggle will not take place if all these things were put together. So, a lot of training must be put in place for the teachers. But for the private school, I must confess that I don’t see a decline. I am seeing more of a push towards what is necessary.

On the other hand, the children in the public schools are the ones who are way behind and so government must, as a necessity, put things in place so that these children can leverage, and then there is no danger that one child is going full speed ahead while another child is left behind. That just determines where they end up. Government just needs to understand the place of education and put everything that it needs into it.

I also think that education has to be practical, related, and fun, so infusing technology into the curriculum, will go a long way in making students understand better what they are being thought. And the teachers have to be certified in specific subjects to be able to teach the students effectively.

Apart from the gab in the curriculum, this is the content; Canadian content is way more advanced than Nigerian content. Some of our students taking physics here are now looking at topics they didn’t teach in the Nigerian curriculum and imagine them going straight to the university in Canada to study engineering, just imagine what will happen.  

The content and the way it’s being taught are all we focus on at Maple.

What competitive edge does Maple have over other Nigerian institutions offering the same services you do?

I am a Nigerian-Canadian. I have interests in both countries. A Nigerian goes to Canada to have a better life and also to ensure that our children get a quality education and that is the whole essence of this movement. Foreign education has always existed. I schooled in England in 1979 and it was not because the Nigerian education was bad then but some people just had the opportunity to study abroad. 

So, having lived there, and having seen the difference and the advantage and also the fact that the quality of the education that we have makes a lot of difference; it shapes you whether you like it or not- your knowledge, attitude to work, your disposition, and everything about you. You would be gunning for excellence and anywhere you are people will notice something different about you simply because of the opportunity you had to go through quality education in an advanced country. Let’s not also forget the fact that your environment also shapes. 

The country in which you are – how they do things, how advanced they are, and how clean they are, gives you ideas and your brain will just be ticking. And you would be like, why is Nigeria not like this? Why do we do things this way? So that itself shapes you. So the environment you are in determines how your life will progress. So having had that exposure and experience, I am coming back to Nigeria to make a lot of difference.

Now, Maple Canadian College is owned by Canadians who have lived in Canada, passed through the Canadian educational system, and are also certified Canadian immigration consultants, so we understand the country, we understand the curriculum and we also have a company called Maple Education Canada where we represent over 65 Canadian schools, so getting admission for our students is not difficult because we know what it takes. We ensure that our students meet their requirements for Canadian universities as well as other foreign universities and applying for their study permit is something that we have been trained to do, so it’s like a one-stop-shop. 

You are in a college where the parent company, Maple Education Canada has affiliations with different Canadian schools so getting admission is very straightforward or even admission to other universities that our students chose to go to. Not only that. We do orientation for our students before they travel as well as for their parents so that parents will understand where their kids are going. 

And our certificates are recognised all over the world. When our students finally get to Canada, we provide immigration services like study permits extension, work permits, and even those that want to stay back permanently after studying after graduation, we’ve got their backs because our headquarters is based in Canada.

Ebi Obaro, a certified Canadian Immigration, and Education Consultant is the brain behind Maple Education Canada Inc., the foremost provider of Canadian Immigration and Education Consulting Services in Nigeria. Due to her unparalleled wealth of experience, she was able to build Maple into a formidable company. With over 20 years of experience working with students and immigrants to Canada, she founded Maple Canadian College after careful evaluation of the experiences and needs of international students in Canada. In this interview with MARY NNAH, she bares her mind on her consistency in building an international brand through her various ventures and also on the scholarships she is offering to deserving Nigerian students who desire to study abroad

What was the vacuum that you saw that gave birth to Maple Canadian College?

It’s not by chance that I got involved in Canadian education. I didn’t stumble across it. My family comprising seven of us, five children inclusive, migrated to Canada 25 years ago. So, having had our five children go through Canadian education – some from elementary school and all of them through secondary school and university, in 2000 I had the idea of promoting Canadian education in Nigeria. The idea came from the fact that having had our children go through Canadian education; one could see the gap in the Nigerian education curriculum.

So we established Maple Canadian College (MCC) about 20 years ago to recruit Nigerian students to Canadian schools. Over a while, we discovered something about our Nigerian students which was that they were struggling in school.

The difference in the syllabus was beginning to show, especially in English and Sciences. We all claim that we studied English from primary school but there are a whole lot of differences when it comes to the quality of English that we know and then students had a lot of problems with their writing skills. So Nigerian students who got into Canadian universities found it difficult to write, and there is usually a lot of research and writing of papers they do. But today, our students find English different even though it was difficult for them in the first two years but now we have been able to get them to do very well in English.

Apart from that, Sciences and Mathematics were also difficult.  I remember once when the then Nigerian Ambassador to Canada challenged me over 15 years, that why don’t we open a Canadian school in Nigeria so that Nigerian students at that early age, most of who are 16 years old, can do the grade 12 programme in Nigeria before going to university Canada because we could see a lot of them who were struggling and have become disillusioned; they were failing. And there was a lot of concern from their parents that their kids were not doing well and they could not understand why. 

So, that challenge was there for so many years and at that time I didn’t see us having a school but a time came when we decided to do this, so we set up Maple Canadian College to bridge that gap between the Nigeria secondary school syllabus and the Canadian high school curricular.

Our vision is to become a model of innovative teaching and academic achievement across the world and our mission is to provide a world-class Canadian education to highly motivated students to set them on the best path to achieving their academic and professional goals in top choice global universities and colleges. So our certificates are not issued in Nigeria, they are from Canada.

 If you were to chronicle the experience so far, how would you describe it?

The journey started seven years ago, first, we needed to get land and also build a purpose-built infrastructure that is world-class. That took a lot of courage to achieve. Once we achieved that, in 2019 we had our first set of students.

You know what it means to start a new business – there was this anxiety and worries about how it was going to turn out and if we were going to break even but the focus wasn’t the money.

The focus was on the benefits of bringing Canadian education to Nigeria at a much more affordable cost for parents and for also the children to get more mature before going thousands of miles away. We had a Canadian principal the first year. That cost us a lot but we had to do it. And we had 24 students in our first year. I thought we would have more but I was told that school doesn’t start big but starts small and that the number we started with wasn’t bad. That gave us some comfort and we went on with that. Our entire students succeeded. They did extremely well. Some had an average of 92 per cent and above. They got into top universities and won scholarships. Canadian universities offer scholarships based on academic excellence, you don’t even apply for them. It is like they award you for passing their exams. We were very excited about this outcome.

The good thing about Canadian schools is that they give admission after the first semester. They don’t wait till the end of the programme. The first semester is five months so at the end of the five months, once we get their first semester results, we apply to universities, we get the admission, and we start their visa processing. Almost all our students got their visas and for those who didn’t, we reapplied and they got their visas. 

We had a 99 per cent success for Canadian visas while some went to the UK and America. So the first year was very encouraging not only with the admission but with the visa success rate. In our second year, our number doubled. That was more encouraging. The same thing happened as in the first year. 

Our students did very well and got into various universities. Some got admission into six or seven universities. As I said, university admission in Canada is based on grades. They don’t care where you come from.

Our teachers, I must confess, caught on, understood the curriculum, and were able to teach it effectively because they were also trained from day one by our partner institution in Canada, Rosedale Academy, Ontario, Canada.  They are trained physically here in Lagos.

This is our third set of students and over 90 per cent have already had admissions. We have started the visa processing and I believe that just like the set before them, they would also get their study permits.

What is your relationship with Rosedale Academy, Ontario, Canada?

You cannot set up a Canadian institution offshore without the support of another Canadian school in Canada. So, we had to partner with Rosedale Academy in Toronto to be able to set up this school here in Nigeria.  What Rosedale Academy does is give us the curriculum, which is blended – it is blended in the sense that it is online. Every student here has a laptop. Our teachers physically do the teaching while they all have partner Canadian teachers in Canada, working hand in hand with our teachers in Nigeria to ensure that we meet the Canadian standard. Getting Rosedale Academy was the most difficult thing that we had to overcome before we started school. Our students’ assignments, tests, theses, and exams are not marked here. Our teachers in Nigeria only teach and make sure that our students understand, do their assignments, and submit them to our partner school in Canada. 

We gather that Maple College in collaboration with Canadian Universities has some scholarship opportunities for Nigerian students. How do people take advantage of this?

The first of these scholarships was offered to a student who got over $200,000 scholarship in a U.S university. So, this year, Maple Canadian College and its partner school, Rosedale are offering three scholarships – one full and two partial for students to study at Maple Canadian College.

 The scholarship covers residence, meals, uniforms, and various other things. And it is worth over 20,000 Canadian dollars which is equivalent to about N6.6 Million. Then scholarships are for students who have finished grade 11 and want to transition into a grade 12 school or students who have already completed their year 12 and have finished WAEC and need to fill a gap before the transit outside of Nigeria or students who are finishing their grade 12 this year. So, it is not for pot-graduate students. Even if a student does not qualify to get the aforementioned scholarships, there is the possibility of them getting a scholar into any of the Canadian universities at the end of the programme based on their academic excellence.

In the previous year, students got over 600,000 dollars in scholarships, and this year, we have over 500,000 dollars in scholarships for the students presently in Maple Canadian College presently in different universities in the world. So this is an opportunity for a scholarship for Maple Canadian College or any of the universities around the world.

How have you been able to manage teenagers by molding their character and intellectual considering the pressure that comes with adolescence?

When you think of Nigerian education, we all know that there are gaps in the curriculum.  Sometimes you find out that the curriculum has nothing to do with reality. There is always the need to transfer what is learned in class to what is done in the real world. 

That was really for us the greatest challenge. Having to come here, go through the Canadian curriculum and then apply the knowledge, is the greatest challenge that they have had to overcome.  Another thing is that they haven’t learned how to do things timely, so when deadlines are set, there is usually a challenge to meeting the deadline. 

These are the things they go through in the first few months, struggling to meet deadlines. When you miss deadlines in the Canadian curriculum, there is a penalty for it. You tend to lose marks once your deadline has passed. So, we had to get them to understand the need to meet deadlines and ensure that their works are ready on time and that they had the privilege of showing their works to their teachers here in Nigeria before they submit them to their Canadian teachers.   

They also had big issues with plagiarism. There is no framework put in place for plagiarism in the Nigerian curriculum. So, a child does not know that copying and pasting without citing sources is a crime whereas there is no tolerance for plagiarism in the Canadian curriculum and even in the western world and so they had a lot of academy integrity issues at the beginning and there are stages to handling those academic issues with Rosedale and the Canadian curriculum as they would usually begin to catch in on what is required of them within a few months here.

You mentioned that Nigeria’s curriculum does not meet up with standards. What are your suggestions on how it could be improved to meet the international standards?

It has also always been my concern. When a child passes through our Nigerian system and they go straight into a foreign university, they are faced with so many academic challenges out there and those were the major reason that Maple Canadian College was established. Nigeria’s education system does not correlate with real life. 

Unfortunately, everybody is passing through the same system, including teachers. And so the tendency is that the outcome will always be the same. The people teaching and those receiving end up the same. So there is a need for training. I am not in the school of thought that we should take up another person’s education system. I think that what we have is robust but we need now to put some extras at it – a review. 

There is no time when we review and when even the review is going to take place, it is not done by educationists but by people outside of the education sector who have a clue of what is happening inside. So if this review is going to be done and done with the intent to improve the outcome, then educationists need to sit down, look at our curriculums, look at real-life and find a way to put some balance into what the students are learning.

And then infuse technology. There is no education without technology, so we need to infuse technology from the grassroots – the primary so that they are not left behind because when they go outside, they are left behind. And a lot of students now do the extra. Those who want their children to study abroad, actually go the extra mile to do something more for their children, so that they are not left behind if they go outside. 

That struggle will not take place if all these things were put together. So, a lot of training must be put in place for the teachers. But for the private school, I must confess that I don’t see a decline. I am seeing more of a push towards what is necessary.

On the other hand, the children in the public schools are the ones who are way behind and so government must, as a necessity, put things in place so that these children can leverage, and then there is no danger that one child is going full speed ahead while another child is left behind. That just determines where they end up. Government just needs to understand the place of education and put everything that it needs into it.

I also think that education has to be practical, related, and fun, so infusing technology into the curriculum, will go a long way in making students understand better what they are being thought. And the teachers have to be certified in specific subjects to be able to teach the students effectively.

Apart from the gab in the curriculum, this is the content; Canadian content is way more advanced than Nigerian content. Some of our students taking physics here are now looking at topics they didn’t teach in the Nigerian curriculum and imagine them going straight to the university in Canada to study engineering, just imagine what will happen.  

The content and the way it’s being taught are all we focus on at Maple.

What competitive edge does Maple have over other Nigerian institutions offering the same services you do?

I am a Nigerian-Canadian. I have interests in both countries. A Nigerian goes to Canada to have a better life and also to ensure that our children get a quality education and that is the whole essence of this movement. Foreign education has always existed. I schooled in England in 1979 and it was not because the Nigerian education was bad then but some people just had the opportunity to study abroad. 

So, having lived there, and having seen the difference and the advantage and also the fact that the quality of the education that we have makes a lot of difference; it shapes you whether you like it or not- your knowledge, attitude to work, your disposition, and everything about you. You would be gunning for excellence and anywhere you are people will notice something different about you simply because of the opportunity you had to go through quality education in an advanced country. Let’s not also forget the fact that your environment also shapes. 

The country in which you are – how they do things, how advanced they are, and how clean they are, gives you ideas and your brain will just be ticking. And you would be like, why is Nigeria not like this? Why do we do things this way? So that itself shapes you. So the environment you are in determines how your life will progress. So having had that exposure and experience, I am coming back to Nigeria to make a lot of difference.

Now, Maple Canadian College is owned by Canadians who have lived in Canada, passed through the Canadian educational system, and are also certified Canadian immigration consultants, so we understand the country, we understand the curriculum and we also have a company called Maple Education Canada where we represent over 65 Canadian schools, so getting admission for our students is not difficult because we know what it takes. We ensure that our students meet their requirements for Canadian universities as well as other foreign universities and applying for their study permit is something that we have been trained to do, so it’s like a one-stop-shop. 

You are in a college where the parent company, Maple Education Canada has affiliations with different Canadian schools so getting admission is very straightforward or even admission to other universities that our students chose to go to. Not only that. We do orientation for our students before they travel as well as for their parents so that parents will understand where their kids are going. 

And our certificates are recognised all over the world. When our students finally get to Canada, we provide immigration services like study permits extension, work permits, and even those that want to stay back permanently after studying after graduation, we’ve got their backs because our headquarters is based in Canada.