Pastor Ola Adejubee is a Pastor-in-Charge of Region 46 of the Redeemed Christian Church Of God and also the Assistant to Continental Overseer, Training and Development, African Continent 2. He recently spoke exclusively with The Beautiful Day Testimonial where he stated that feeding members of the church is just peripheral; that the real good deed lies in empowerment amongst others. Excerpts.
In recent times, Nigerians are experiencing hardship and people are beginning to point fingers at the church to help feed the people. Sir, do you think the church has a role to play in taking care of the needs of the people in the first place?
The Church should be involved even though it is peripheral. Whatever Church can do shouldn’t be the main substance, it should be an addition to what people themselves are doing. The church should create empowerment programmes so that people can catch fish on their own rather than being fed with fishes.
I am a trainer and I love to empower people. Many people don’t know there are skills that can be learnt that could enable them earn money from home, without having to transport themselves. There are many youngsters who are earning more than N500,000 and they are staying in their house with their laptop; they are not even transporting themselves. There are many of such skills and funny enough, such skills are universal that you can be here and be working for a company in UAE or Europe. I will like the youths to be empowered.
Can you imagine somebody having four children and they are in the university and four of them having skills to earn money online without having to ask anything from their parents? The parents will be relived considerably and such students can setup their own organizations before they graduate. Anyone who is going to school now and doesn’t have a registered company and doesn’t have IT skills, may find things difficult later.
Many years ago, I bought a book for my children when they were in school and it almost caused a fight. What is the title of the book? “The millionaire fast lane”. What is the book all about? It is all about IT skills, earning money through IT skills. The author said that is the fastest lane now. We have the fastest lane, the medium speed lane and the slow lane.
The slow lane is the one waiting till the end of the month to receive salary. The medium speed lane is the one combining salary with investment. The fastest lane is having online business where you don’t need to leave your house and you are earning money, even when you are sleeping you are still earning money.
It is possible and those are the areas I want the church to invest in; establish innovation box in many places. Take financial literacy to schools so that the eyes of the children can be opened to how to earn money from secondary school with skills. They should know how to contribute, not collect, that is the way to go now. Feeding people is not sustainable.
Imagine people being stampeded, falling upon one another just to get half a bag of rice, what is your opinion on this matter?
Half a bag of rice is even better, even loaves of bread. I don’t know among the politicians who went and put together loaves of bread and tubers of yam. For people to collect tubers of yam and loaves of bread standing upon one another, are you sure that is hunger? I don’t think it is hunger, it is this tendency to have awoof mindset. If it is free, you will see people spending N400 to go and collect free N500. They would have spent N400 naira before they wonder, what have they come to collect?
I don’t know whether it was online or on television I watched this programme and I felt like crying. A whole family man won a lottery of N5,000 or so and they were interviewing him, “tell them you have won, tell them you have won,” you will think it is N5 million. My wife and I shook our heads. This is not only poverty but extreme of it.

It is not poverty of cash but poverty of the mind. So, there is need to teach people how to get out of poverty of the mind. Funny enough, do you realize that it is where there is thick darkness that the smallest of light tends to have maximum impact? It is when there is economic downturn you can generally proffer solution and make quick money.
But how will people see the light?
That is what I am saying, take for example somebody has a skill and is earning close to N400,000 a month; that shouldn’t be the final bus-stop. You create what is called Progressive Saving Agenda and delayed gratification because there are so many things needed in the society.
Can you imagine a school like a university doing research on how to get bread from plantain seed and succeeding? What do you think will happen? I travelled to the pacific to monitor a church I was planting, and I stopped by at South Korea. In their restaurant, they have close to 5 to 6 different types of breads.
Can you imagine some of our schools of Agriculture investing and developing plantain bread and people begin to eat plantain bread on campus, and begin to produce same for their town and it is being replicated in other universities. It is not compulsory we have to eat wheat bread. The problem is that we are not expanding our mind; we are not developing the product of our research.
We don’t have to fold our hands, once we start earning income. No! The income you are earning should be the beginning of your saving investment and level acquisition. That is why I teach financial literacy. The fact that the economy is down here is the open door to more opportunities. When people have this kind of opportunities, their eyes need to be opened.
The city of Gerar where Isaac dwelled was made of several things; it was Isaac that was providing the services according to Genesis 2. He was into farming, water production; he was into animal husbandry, too. He became so wealthy the whole nation envied him, why? He was involved in Productivity.
Just recently, a province in Ado-Ekiti organized what we called “Jesus Market”; does that have any significance in addressing the situation?
Daddy Adeboye said we should go into farming a few years ago. If there is any product the church is selling at a subsidized rate, and they actually planted and harvested those goods, then it is beautiful. But if they are buying to resell, it will not still make people to be productive. The people need to be involved in the productive chain because several things are wasted in the process of production. Cassava for example, garri is not the only thing that can come from cassava. It is an idea but that should not be the end of it. If they are to be producing those things, beautiful. Then they can go into greenhouse farming where they can have a place like small building where they could produce so much.
Farming can be extremely profitable. Somebody showed me a farm online; he showed us how the Hausa come all the way from Katsina to Lagos to pack chicken waste drops. They brought their trucks, they use it as fertilizer. That is just one of those things we are wasting.
If we go into digital skill acquisition, investment, modern agriculture, the system will be so good. People are hungry, we have variable land, people don’t want to use cutlass and hoe for farming again.
A lot of people usually ascribe every problem to spirituality. Shouldn’t the church educate members on how to help themselves to come out of poverty?
That is what I have always been saying, productivity mindset is inevitable for self-abundance. That is why I have written a number of books to help people in financial management. The truth of the matter is that there is need for a balanced gospel. Elijah was productive; he was a source of blessing. It was when he was discouraged that he was fed by ravens. That was not the beginning and the end of the story. After he was fed by ravens, he again had to go for 40 days and 40 nights self-denial in other to continue with the assignment he was ordained to do.
How do you explain the effect of government policy? If you are productive, yet there is a bad management of the economy, will that make you to be free from possible hardship?
Yes, it depends on your perspective. Opportunities are more now than we had in the time of Buhari. Even though things are harder now, yet people are making more money.
…In what area Sir?
That is what am saying, depending on how you look at it; because naira went down, more dollars came in. Because dollar went down, many Nigerians who are outside the country were encouraged to bring in more money. So what you need to do is to look for what they need. All Nigerians outside still feel hunger and taste for things from Nigeria. If more services are rendered, more dollars will come in but it depends on someone who is imaginative and productive, not salary earners, not those looking for job for the purpose of earning salary. Those who are doing that are in the majority, those who have imaginative and productive mind are the people who maximize opportunity.
Apart from that, now that we have naira oscillating and dangling, whatever online business you offer, you can earn generous money.
For those earning salary with so many responsibilities on their neck like school fees, house rent and at the end of the day they are left with nothing to invest, how can they manoeuvre their way?
Money is not always sufficient for the owner. It doesn’t matter how much you earn; you just need to earn more. If you want to spend more, what do you do? You multiply what you have either by delayed gratification or curtailing what you spend money on.
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