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Before noon of the D-day, the premises were agog with ecstatic teenagers who came out in their numbers to listen to inspirational talks from the A-list guest speakers. The event was the 9th edition of Annual Teens Career Conference of The Everlasting Arms Parish (TEAP) of RCCG, Garki II, Abuja, hosted by one of Nigeria’s most respected journalists, former presidential spokesperson, and Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (FNAL), Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, alongside his wife, Tosin. It was anchored on the theme, “Cultivating healthy relationships: setting the right boundaries.”
Amazingly, what was envisioned and sowed as a mustard seed ten years ago – (the 2020 edition could not hold because of COVID-19 lockdown) – has today, grown like an oak tree. That is the power of little beginning at work. The undying resolve to give back to the society based on the principle of white space. A Lebanese-American writer and poet, Kahlil Gibran once admonished that: “A candle loses nothing of its light when lighting another.” Thus, over the years, the programme featured a galaxy of accomplished personalities from different walks of life – who shared their unique stories and encounters – for impactful and invaluable life’s lessons.
The focus on the teens who are still untainted, nature-bare, and brimming with hope is both strategic and future-proof. Teens are heavily distracted and largely impressionable. As such, the toxicity of the virtual space and social media fantasies have turned to a battlefield in search of role models. The teens are not only faced with internal ‘riots’ of bodily development and transition crisis, but also the in-thing outsourcing of parenting. Thus, with ubiquity of unpleasant stories in our environment that cut across leadership failure, corruption, negative headlines, wickedness and immorality in high places, what Adeniyi and wife are doing is to mainstream the values of integrity, hard work, perseverance, excellence, and godliness with living examples.
The first speaker, Mr. Adebowale Emmanuel Olujimi, the CEO of EMADEB Energy Services Limited, a big player in the downstream and upstream operations in the oil sector, cursorily gave an account of how the grace of God helped him to take his business from scratch to phenomenal success, which represents a bright spot in Nigeria’s murky environment. He eulogized the country as a home of abounding opportunities, and urged the teens to guard their hearts, manage their time and focus prudently, and build relationships that are not transactional. He harped on the need for premium on integrity and noted that it was what helped his company to navigate through initial blackmail, business mischief, and bad press.
The second speaker, Mrs. Nonye Soludo, the wife of Anambra State governor, Chukwuma Soludo, and mother of six children, sent an enduring message to the young minds with her unassuming personae, charming humility, and simple attire. Describing relationship as a work-in-progress, she noted that it requires hard work, compromise, tolerance, and less emphasis on the shortcomings of one another. She urged the teens to know when to say ‘No’. For her, healthy living practices breed healthy relationships and harped on eating of natural food, cutting down the consumption of processed food and sugary drinks, drinking of water regularly, sleeping well, and maintaining personal and environmental hygiene, as according to her, dirty lifestyle and environment can rupture a relationship.
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For couples, Mrs. Soludo urged them to do physical exercises together for bonding and curtailing of distractions that usually come from television, mobile devices, and the children. She said that the major prayer when they got married newly was to make their marriage exemplary and that even when her husband was abroad, they worked on it with intentionality. Consequently, she noted that the resolve entailed necessary boundaries for both of them and their children.
The icing on the cake however, came from the motivational speaker and leadership expert, Fela Durotoye who thrilled the audience with personal captivating stories. He said that a striking line from Myles Munroe’s book, In Pursuit of Purpose – “When the purpose of a thing is not known, abuse is inevitable” – which he read in 1997 altered the course of his destiny. He understood that man is a leader for today, not necessarily waiting for tomorrow, and that leadership is not about age or title. Thus, from a modest snooker games business on campus, he metamorphosed into leadership by moving people to do extraordinary things. He shared the story of how he caught the vision of ‘Mushin Makeover Project’ in 2009 and mobilized over 2,000 volunteers to paint 296 houses on seven streets of the suburb free of charge. It was an urban renewal initiative in a densely populated and run-down area of Lagos mainland meant to transform its aesthetics and inculcate the psychology of nation-building through personal responsibility. He noted that though the balance in his personal account was N130,000 when he caught the vision, about N88 million was eventually spent on the project that lasted for 6 weeks, including drums of paint and brushes, contributed by people willingly. Indeed, the mere site of street-boys volunteers, who hitherto were classified as never-do-wells, depicted the power transformative leadership.
Before then, Durotoye had in 2006 remained indoors and wrote a book titled, 17 Secrets of High-Flying Students. The inspiration for the book came from the abysmal performance of greater percentage of candidates who sat for NECO examinations in 2005. And he set out to correct the anomaly through enlightening stories. He gave out 500 copies free. And from the book, two girls who were not doing well automatically came tops in their classes in two semesters. That was how two bank chiefs ordered for thousands of copies, just as a governor in Southwest Nigeria, through his daughter’s recommendation, placed an order for thousands of copies that were distributed to students and teachers in his state. So, from setting out to solve a social problem created by a dysfunctional educational system, God opened exponential financial doors for him.
Conclusively, Durotoye urged the teens to use their vision, values, and focus to set boundaries, and also build robust relationships.
