In this interview with IFEDAYO OGUNYEMI, the President of Light for Living, a para-church organisation, Adeniyi Adekunle, shares his views on the importance of values in the society and erosion of values among young people, among other issues.
Some of your books are on the subject of marriage, business, religion and national development, how do they connect?
Almost everything I do flows out of my assignment in life and everything connects seamlessly for me. There’s a man called Lot in the Bible; he was the nephew of Abraham who is regarded as the father of faith. Lot relocated with his family to another city, he had learnt faith in God from his uncle but when he got to this new place, he was not intentional about communicating the values of his faith to his family and his society. Sodom and Gomorrah got so corrupted that God had to destroy the city. Lot escaped with his life but lost his wife, his business and all his possessions in that city. His two daughters who managed to escape with him didn’t even imbibe his values, they had become so influenced by the culture of Sodom and Gomorrah that they deceived their father into committing incest with them.
In this story, we see how the failure of a man to share the values of his faith within the context of his family and business ultimately affected him. Values must be taught within the context of family, worship centres, and the workplace until they become a culture of society. When this is not done, we all become victims of the society when it is bankrupt of values. And this is evident in our country and many other countries that are considered very religious.
You have touched on a very sensitive issue, religion in the open society. Isn’t religion meant to be a private thing between you and your God? Many people believe it is the reason for a lot of societal problems.
Not really. I don’t believe people should impose their beliefs on others. I don’t believe in a state religion but I believe everybody and every society should be guided by values. The values of honesty, love, justice and equity are good for any society irrespective of your religious beliefs. One of the reasons for the “japa syndrome” is that people believe they can have a better quality of life in those foreign countries. If you consider the fundamental values of those societies, you will discover it’s beyond belief that has lived in the secrecy of their hearts, it has become a behaviour that now defines their culture. Values are not things we just pay lip service to or something we practice within the confines of our homes or worship centres, it should be evident in every aspect of our lives. People can hide under the cloak of religion to commit all sorts of atrocities but a value-driven society will always be a desirable society to live in. I didn’t say a perfect society, but a decent and desirable society.
How would you assess the level of these values in today’s youths?
On a general level, there has been a huge erosion of values among the youth and the prevailing culture in the society is largely responsible for this, but what is also encouraging is that there are still many young people who are value-driven and are making a difference in their ways. So, it’s not a completely hopeless situation.
How would you describe the overgrowing fancy for greener pastures outside of Nigeria by young folks?
Every normal human being will naturally move towards pleasure and not pain. As long as people perceive that life abroad gives them better opportunities and living standards, they will continue to move out at all costs. Yes, there is a place for delayed gratification and doing the work to make our country better but you need to see the personal value in that before you can take on that cause. The exodus of young Nigerians from the country is disheartening but it is not unexpected.
What can the government do to curtail the japa trend?
Where there is no vision, people live recklessly. The situation in the country is very sad but what makes it worse is that there is no sense of national vision or dream to give people hope. Many countries have been through similar situations like Nigeria and even worse but in their time of difficulty when things looked hopeless the leadership of the nation sold a national vision of progress and prosperity to the people and they committed to the vision.
In my book, “Nigeria’s Call Obey – A Road Map to a New Nigeria,” I discussed how the part of our national anthem already captures the dream of a New Nigeria and the simple pathway there. We have not understood it and we have not been able to marshal our vast human resources in that direction, and this is where leadership comes in.
Our leaders at the various levels of government need to understand the New Nigerian dream, communicate it, model it and encourage the citizens to commit to it too. If we can do this consistently as a nation, before long we will see a New Nigeria emerge.
In what ways have you been putting out your campaign apart from preaching?
I like the use of the word campaign. Although preaching and teaching are a major part of it because they help people with context, we have also tried to model this in the things we do and I believe this starts from the way I conduct life. Self-leadership is the foundation of all leadership. I believe there are two major values from which every other one flows out and these two values are love and truth. So, for me as a person, one of the ways I communicate this is respect for every human being no matter who they are. This respect for people is also reflected in our programmes.
In church, for instance, we have had initiatives like medical outreaches, vocational trainings, football tournaments etc. There is no class distinction whatsoever in considering the people who can benefit from these initiatives and the people are treated with the dignity they deserve as human beings.
Even when we do training for organisations, we emphasise the fair treatment of the human resources within that organisation. Things as simple as appreciating the security people that guard your property and this appreciation is not necessarily monetary.
For me, it’s really beyond programmes, it’s more about people imbibing these values at a personal level. If we can see more people living value-based lives then we can be sure we will begin to make real positive changes in our society.
It is the same challenges faced in every society – the people. Every human society was backward and barbaric at some point in their history but at some point, they got some information about a better way to live. The children of Israel for instance got laws from God that helped guide their conduct and helped them live better lives and develop a better society. Despite this, so many of them were still rebellious and didn’t follow His laws. The people were the problem then and people still pose the greatest challenge now.
We can’t stop doing what we do because of the challenges, because there are also rewards. There was a time in Nigeria not too long ago when we were a value-driven society. We lived in clean, safe and secure neighbourhoods. Traders could leave their goods unattended and just put the price there, when the customers came, they took only what they bought and placed the money on the table for the trader. When the trader came back, everything was intact. I believe we can still value respecting society again. But it’s something that we must all be committed to.
You are a man of many parts; can you tell us about your background, academic and career paths?
I’m a husband of one wife and father of two daughters. I serve as the Pastor of The Helper’s House and the Principal Partner at Sense and Century Consulting. My primary education was at Command Children’s School, Mokola and secondary education was at Command Secondary School both in the city of Ibadan, Oyo State. I studied Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering at the Federal Polytechnic Bida, Niger State both for ND and HND. I have also done many courses in networking engineering, Oracle DBA, Entrepreneurship, Social Sector Management, Theology and Leadership, I have a Master’s Degree in Leadership.
With this kind of academic background, how did you choose the path you are in now?
I wonder why too. I initially thought I would end up in academia, probably a professor of engineering but when I got into engineering, I found out that I wasn’t passionate about it, especially the core engineering courses, but I discovered that I liked the processed thinking that engineering gave me and the problem-solving mindset, so in that sense my engineering background is still useful to me today.
I think the real change was as a result of discovering my life’s purpose. The kind of assignment God gave me was quite confusing and not very common back then, the general narrative among Christians was “come out of the world…” but what God was saying to me was “…get actively involved with the world.”. Back in 1993, the only minister of the gospel I knew who was saying and doing something similar was Pastor Tony Rapu, he pastored the Apapa Parish of RCCG which I was attending then. I honestly thought he was a strange fellow that you had to be careful with for saying such things because I didn’t know any other person saying those kinds of things back then. But that calling influenced the direction of my life. I moved out of engineering and began to develop myself in the area of leadership, management and Christian ministry. So apart from my one-year stint as a trainee engineer, I’ve never done anything engineering again, every other thing after that has been ministry basically with some consulting. So, clearly my calling from God has shaped and is still shaping the kind of work I do.
Will it be right to call you a pastor in business, which seems to be a popular thing today?
You would not be incorrect; you might just be incomplete. I am simply a teacher. In our environment where we like titles, that might not sound very glamorous, but it helps me not to get confused about what I do. Wherever you see me and whatever you see me doing is really about teaching. You might see me on different platforms but it is primarily teaching; whether it’s as a pastor to a church congregation, in a business boardroom, in a consulting session, on TV, Radio, through books or social media, all I do is teach. I teach values and how they make us better people within the context of family, faith and society.
Now, that is very clear to me and I’m not confused about that.
and then