Nigerians, especially Christians have been urged to participate in politics as well as activities geared towards improving the standard of the country
This was disclosed by Prof. Olumuyiwa Samuel at the 4th convocation of Chosen Life Christian University, CLICU, and the 8th induction ceremony of
Institute of Christian Theologians, Scholars and Professionals, ICTSP in Abeokuta, the Ogun State Capital.
Samuel, who is the President of CLICU, while speaking to journalists, said Christians must participate in the affairs of the country in order to bring about good Governance and progress, adding that the political scene will be better with the participation of men of God.
His words “Yes, if we pastors don’t go into politics, who should be in politics? Because whatever laws are made by politicians, we must abide by them. There is no place in the Bible where the Bible says you should go against your leader.
Leadership is like a pyramid. The best diagram for leadership is a pyramid. When you look at the top, it’s always smaller than the base. So, in every country, you will always have a few people at the helm of affairs. Nigeria is not exceptional. So, if we pastors go into politics, I think the political scene will be better because we carry the presence of God”.
While proffering solutions to the country’s economic challenges, he said the country needs more entrepreneurs for the country to stabilize.
He added “I make most of my money online. We are helping our students to be independent because that’s what Nigeria needs now. Nigeria needs more entrepreneurs. We need more CEOs. We need more people who have vision so that they can employ those people who maybe have not gotten what it takes to stand alone”.
On the two institutions, he said
“Like our school now, we don’t groom people to seek employment because, number one, most of the people that are here are practitioners — meaning, they are already in ministry. So, we are grooming them to let them understand the ministry of Christ better”.
The Keynote Speaker, Professor Livingstone Apochi, who spoke about discipleship as a medium of growing a 21st-century church, noted that for the African continent to develop, it must go back to its foundation.
He said ” The disconnect between spirituality and development in Africa, which we are lacking in the church, is a result of a lost foundation. But I thank God when I see the caption topic about discipleship. Today, you see many African leaders, especially church leaders, who get to a point of growth and then begin to mess up. It’s because they don’t have discipleship.
The capacity to impact, influence, change, and transform a generation depends on the quantum of what you are influenced by from the position of development. Now, your position of development as a Christian starts from discipleship”.
According to him, “So the message I bring to Africa is: let’s go back to the foundation where we are coming from. Somebody told me that a person can get an anointing within a month and become somebody, and that is what is messing up Africa’s spirituality.
There’s something I call a maladjusted group. Many Christian leaders in Africa belong to this maladjusted group. They don’t have a foundation. They don’t have a building. They don’t have development within them until the spiritual becomes developed”.
He said “The strength of every building, the strength of every structure, is rooted in the foundation. Until the foundation is developed in Africa, there is still going to be a bigger problem. So the message I’m bringing back to Africa is: let’s go back and develop our foundation through discipleship.
If you have a call from God, you must be trained by somebody. You must get an impartation from somebody. When we look back to where we are coming from, the people who made an impact in Christianity, whose books we are reading and benefiting from today—if you trace them back, you will see they had somebody they loved and respected, somebody that trained them”.
The cleric said, “There are three key things that will make Africa break that gap. Until we have trained, trimmed, and tamed people in the body of Christ, there will still be mess-ups. And that comes from discipleship. You are trained when you go to school, you go to Bible school, and other things. But if you don’t go through discipleship, you are not trained, you are not tamed—because the flesh will speak.
So, I am asking African leaders to go back to a position where they have training. Now, we have a lot of training, and that’s why you see the gap between development and other things. But there’s no foundational growth in spirituality because there is no taming and trimming”.
