Kingsley Ibeji is the founder and chief executive officer of JoKings Educare Ltd UK. In this interview with Happy Zarokada, he spoke on the essential services the firm offers to its clients, internationally. Excerpts:
What is the mission and vision of Educare?
The mission and vision of JoKings Educare.
Let’s start with the mission, of course, you know is an established education consulting firm and our aim is basically to ensure that we offer the best of quality educational consulting services to our clients. So, our mission is basically to be able to match our international students to international education institutions by applying for professional experience and enhancing their career while ensuring that we offer them quality assurance to the attainment of their dream. Our vision is to see that students attain quality education and at the same time become a global educational consulting firm that is well recognised by both institutions and international students.
So far how has it been since JoKings Educare started?
Well, it’s been good. We all started from United Kingdom in 2012 and then we expanded to Nigeria in 2015. Today, as I speak to you, we have been able to establish six branches in Nigeria and we have also been able to expand to Accra, Ghana; we also expanded to Nairobi, Kenya and to Kampala in Uganda, to Harare in Zimbabwe and then now to Cameroon. So, we have also increased the number of our students between 2012 and 2025 and the students that have reached us have tremendously increased to a large extent because of the huge support and professional services we offer to them. We have recruited over ten thousand students within this period of thirteen years and have been able to increase the number of our students from 2012 to 2025 from one country to another, and from Europe to America for their international studies.
What is the basis of your recommendations to your clients to avoid mistakes?
Well, first and foremost we proffer the use of integrity, transparency and professionalism and we are able to be open and straight forward to our clients and maintain our quality. We do not recommend schools that we feel that cannot offer this quality to them. So, it is not all about we getting money, it is more of ensuring that the students get the best of what they desire. We are very straight forward and open, transparent and we try to avoid situations where our clients complain about our services or complain about anything related to money and most importantly, we operate an open-door policy to our employees as well as partners and as well as our clients.
How do you assess that the students are getting the best from institutions you work with or you referred them to- simply put, how do you track their progress?
Basically, you know because our job is to refer them to these institutions and these institutions of course when they study with any of our partner university students are assessed based on their performance and they are given assignments, class works and giving examinations to be able to assess whether they have understood what they are taught in class. We also do follow up of our students by getting positive feedback from them by asking questions of how you are doing with your studies and stuffs like that.
Of course, there are times students have one or two issues with their academic activity and of course have the opportunity to retake such subject and do better.
Recently, some students were praising the impact of JoKing Educare in their educational lives. So, what is responsible for the success story?
Well, it is an entire team effort. No one takes any glory or success because I as the Chief Executive Officer do not take any glory. We work as a team, as every team member from various department contributes from the very beginning of students’ enquiry and even when students arrived in their various destination (countries). More so, it is more of a team work and the students are giving us positive feedbacks and it also belongs to the entire team.
What role do government policies play in shaping Educare programmes?
A lot, both from the home country and international. So, lets even start from the home country, the government policies with regards to forex, with regards of the students’ ability to pay their tuition fees. Initially, some couple of years back students can walk to any bank or their bank and make available the fund in their account and process what is called Form A and will be able to pay their tuition fee at a low cost rate to their institutions of learning but due to the government policy in forex, it has become very difficult and students have to resort to the parallel market or the black market to pay their tuition fees which however, costs them more and also has impact on our business because many students who want to study and enhance their educational background abroad but cannot afford the cost because of government policy. In the year 2023, it cost a student less to study abroad than now because in 2025 you pay an average of twenty-one million naira to study abroad. And most airlines are also complaining of moving their funds if they charge or sell their tickets in naira value and have made some of them to charge more than what they used to charge before and so many things like that.
One other basic thing that is affecting most of the students that want to study abroad is the immigration policy and changing of policies where countries have changed their immigration policies and this has affected a lot of students and we had a situation sometime in 2024 when the UK government said that Master’s students would not be able to travel with their dependants and this had an impact especially married students and you know of course, as an African, we are family-oriented people who want to be very close to our families.
However, you know some students who want to advance their education abroad are unable to travel because of the immigration policy and it affected the number of students who want to study abroad.
Are you now saying that different government policies especially immigration and forex have impacted negatively on your business?
In fact, government policies when it comes to monetary and financial policies have impacted on students we are able to recruit to study abroad.
What are the primary challenges Educare is facing to execute its programmes to prospective students moving forward?
The first challenge I could mention is foreign exchange and it is really a problem because its changes anyhow and at any time. And the wrong educational consultant who does not practise the business with professionalism and has integrity issues and sometimes you have to reach out to a client because they have had previous and negative experience with other educational consultants in the previous years.
They being to develop cold feet and skeptical about your company and trust issue will arise because they are scarred and hoping that they are not getting into another wrong hand, and it is very challenging.
Again, one of the challenges is not having an enabling environment especially in Nigeria where you don’t have access to the Internet because most times, clients want to communicate with you via online and all that but lack of Internet slows down your work operation of your employee.
You are into scholarship. How does your students benefit from your scholarship scheme?
You see, what we do in regards to scholarship is to access the scholarships available with some of our partner institutions and sometimes the scholarship could be certain percentage of the entire tuition fee and sometimes it could be full scholarship and sometimes it could huge amount.
We communicate the information to our potential students and let them know and sometimes, we support on the application process for the scholarship that are available in these institutions.
We are not the ones offering but our partner institutions.
Finally, what is your message to your students and intending applicants who want to benefit from JoKings Educare?
Our major message is what inspires you inspires us. If you as a student is aspiring to embark on international education to study abroad it gets us inspired to support you fully and professionally. So, our message to most of our potential clients is that we are here for you and we will support you professionally, and will advise you because we have certified counselors who will give professional services and support towards your attainment to travel abroad for studies.
