OLUMIDE OLADPO EMMANUEL popularly known as the Common Sense Guru is no doubt one of the worlds leading Relationship Experts, Motivational Speakers and Wealth Creation Agents.
With
an Executive Masters Degree in Business Administration from University of
Huddersfield in the UK and A Real Estate Executive Certificate with a special
focus on Capital Markets, Project Finance, and Business Strategy from the
prestigious Harvard Business School in the United States, Olumide Emmanuel is
loaded with all round success. He is the Host of the daily “Pathway to Wealth”
broadcast with millions of followers; the weekly “Success, Business, and
Leadership School” where a new breed without greed is being raised, empowered
and released; and the monthly “School of Money Seminar” where thousands of
participants are being mentored and guided for cooperative wealth; and many
other conferences like the “Wisdom for Singles”, “Wisdom for Couples”, “How to
be a Best-selling Author”, “How to Build
a Successful Business” and “How to be a Millionaire”.
He
is on the board of many businesses and organisations and directly manages some
of them which include Parable Ventures Ltd, Fingerprints, Plus Global Ventures
and the Common Sense Group as the Chairman and CEO over the group with
subsidiaries covering Real Estate, Oil and Gas, Travel and Tours, Publishing,
Media, Consulting, Training and Seminar.
As
a Philanthropist and Humanitarian, he founded the Non-Governmental Organisation,
Dynamites Forum International (DFI) to help empower the youth and raise the
next generation, and the Olumide Emmanuel Foundation (OEF) with the aim of
eradicating poverty and establishing a positive legacy.
He
is married with children.
In
this interview with Info Online News, the vocal man of God spoke about the
recently signed controversial CAMA 2020 and how the church cand nation at large
can benefit from it, enjoy it.
The federal government of Nigeria recently passed into law the Companies &
Allied Matters Act (CAMA) which contains a section that allows the government
to interfere in the affairs of churches in the country. Please, tell us your
take on this law?
Let me begin by saying that I am not a lawyer, but
as an apostle in the marketplace, I operate both in the business world and the
church and have over 31 years experience in both spheres with a global
operation spanning 4 continents, so I have a pretty good grasp of
organisational operations and oversight. The CAMA 2020 is not altogether new
but an updated version of the 1990 version and it’s a 606-page document loaded with
many revolutionary provisions that will forever change the game of business in
Nigeria and help many businesses excel. We, however, have just about 5 pages of
the document that directly relates to your question and has become
unfortunately an issue of contention to my amazement. My take on this is that
while there are few ambiguities in some aspects of the documents as it relates
to the supposed “ interference “, many of the noise we are hearing about this
is highly unnecessary and uncalled for. From the reactions I have read and
heard from many quarters in the church, it is evident that many pastors have
not really read the document but are on an emotional and sentimental bandwagon
which is quite unfortunate for the church.
Over 90% of the pastors and ministers that have
spoken to me on this issue have not read CAMA 2020 personally, and yet they
have a strong opinion about a document they have not read, it’s a sad
development if this is the level we have reduced Christianity to now.
What
do you think as reasons for the enactment of the CAMA law by the government?
It’s not a new law, it’s just an updated version of
a law that has existed for over 30 years and many of the ministries that are
complaining today have already been under the CAMA 1990 law for decades and the
1990 version also has provisions for “ interference” as you call it, so why the
noise now.
The CAMA act 1990 has provisions for you to align
with which included audited accounts, annual returns, limitations and removal
of trustees, use of properties, winding down procedures, etc so I am lost here “
can an arm of government have the right to register you and not have the right
to regulate you?
The law was established to serve as a way to govern,
regulate and oversee the way organisations that are registered under C.A.C are
run and it covers every kind of organisation which includes the churches. So
the reason is regulation and not witch-hunting as is being peddled by some even
though there are aspects that have the possibility of being abused.
The
Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) leadership has described the law as
obnoxious and a declaration of war against the Church by the State. Do you
share this view with the CAN leadership?
I personally do not share the view of CAN because
they are 30 years late. If the 1990 version is applied fully there are many
churches today that will be shut down and many pastors that will end up in jail
not because of any witch-hunt but because of the lawlessness of many churches
and pastors. E.g. the 1990 version and 2020 one too, states that no trustee
of the church can earn from the church yet many pastors are trustees of their
churches and also earning income which is an error, so that alone from the 1990
version and now the 2020 version can finish many pastors.
The 1990 version and 2020 version also expects that all
registered trustees must submit their annual audited account and do annual
returns but many churches that are registered have never done that which is an
error, so truth be told, while some aspect of the new law are ambiguous, we
really need to put our house in order and stop crying wolf where there really
is none.
Some
people said churches should have no fear of submitting to financial scrutiny by
the government if they are doing no wrongs and their records are clean? What do
you have to say to that?
Like I stated earlier, the 1990 version and 2020
version already have that as a law, you cannot be a trustee over public funds
and not be subject to oversight. Churches are not registered in Nigeria, it is
trustees that are registered, and the law is clear since 1990 about the roles
and expectations of trustees. So why do some have issues with having public
funds in their trust being looked into? We are the church of the living God and
should be held at a higher moral and financial standard or else we are not
different from the politicians that have ruined the nation.
You
are raising a poser with your forthcoming programme titled CAMA 2O20 & The
Church; the Truth and the Tales. What are you driving at with this programme?
The event is coming up on Sunday 6th of September
from 8pm to 9pm on my Instagram handle @olumidemmanuel and my reason for
putting this together is to bring a lawyer on board so we can help pastors and
church leaders have clarity like we have done for over 20 years in many
ministers conference all over the nation. This will help clarify the truth from
the tales and put things in the proper perspective void of emotion, sentiments and
zeal without knowledge. E.g I keep hearing many pastors and ministers shouting that
the registrar general now has the sole power of removing church trustees and
bringing in interim trustees which is not true because the same people
saying that are not clearly explaining the process that was itemised in the
document. Please, please and please let’s stop disgracing ourselves and ensure
we read the document and get clarity before making public statements and let’s
avoid using our religious prism to interpret a legal document.
For the trustees to be removed:
- There must be a petition from the trustees and 20%
of the church members
- The commission then investigates the petition to know if there is a case to be answered
- Then the minister looks through it and
approves that there is a case to answer
- Then the case is handed over to the court so that
the parties can come and prove or disprove their case and then the court
decides what happens.
- If the court approves that the trustees are
liable, the court then empowers the commission to remove the trustees and
appoint an interim trustee
- the interim trustees only have a maximum of 12
months to be in the church during which time a new trustee is appointed by the
church to take over from the interim trustee.
- The interim
trustees have nothing to do with the spiritual running of the church but take
over the administration of the finances and properties since that is the reason
for the petition and the court has already found the church trustee guilty.
So
where in all this process does the registrar have a unilateral power to suspend
a church trustee or are they reading a different CAMA from the Nigerian one in
question?
Few areas of ambiguity that can be abused like I
have stated severally before now are:
- The document does not state the kind of people
that can be appointed as interim trustees and that needs to be clear so they
don’t appoint Muslims as trustees over a church.
- The document is not clear about the supposed
sources of petition because one or two trustees can decide to plan a coup and
get 20% of the people into the plot like Lucifer did and cause unnecessary
trouble with lies and deception. It used to be 50% in the 1990 version but has
been reduced in the 2020 version.
- The clause on “public interest“ as a reason to
come in is a major error that opens the door for abuse because that is a very
difficult aspect to prove in law and any honest lawyer will tell you that, it
is the person with the authority that ends up deciding what they consider to be
of ‘’public interest ‘’ and in a warped society like Nigeria where politicians
don’t obey the rule of law and corruption is second nature, that clause is a time
bomb.
How
best do you think the Nigerian Church leadership should handle this CAMA issue,
or churches in the country should just accept to live with the CAMA reality since
a similar law is being practiced in some other countries like the U.K and The U.S?
Let’s leave other countries out of the equation for
now and face our own CAMA. The law is the law, so as at today whether we accept
it or not, it’s already the law and even if we cry out for an adjustment it
will take some time so, for now, we should do the following:
- The church must begin by acknowledging that we
have failed by abandoning the marketplace and the diverse spheres of influence
to the sons of Belial.
- The church must also repent of not being a good
role model to the world when it comes to accountability and moderation which
has made many people lose the respect they should have for us.
- The church must also own up to our negligence and
docility that made us sleep while a major law that affects us is being updated
without our input
- the church must then now reads the law and come up
with our own version of what we believe should be considered to handle all the
ambiguities, so we can then send that to the appropriate authority either for
them to utilize in a review or to be used as an operational guide in the
implementation of the law.
We can't be using social media to rant without
intelligent and strategic steps. The way it is appearing now in the public domain,
it's sounding as if churches don’t want to be regulated or be accountable
because they have something to hide but that's not the message I believe is
being passed, that's however how we are sounding because of our medium and
approach.
We should also use this opportunity to look into how
to have our own internal control measure to regulate ourselves as the body of
Christ in Nigeria and all individual churches should look into their internal
system and structure and correct any lapses to ensure they are in compliance to
best practices as stated in the document. It is not compulsory to register your
church, but once you choose to register, you have to align with the law.
The
government explained that the CAMA law is in the public interest. Can you draw a
parallel between Public interest and God Interest; is there a meeting point?
Gods interest is always in the public interest so
there's never confusion about that, but like I said earlier on when the
government says they are doing something in the “public interest” it is legally
and morally right BUT the Nigerian government has never proved worthy of such
trust based on their track record. So really it's a trust issue.
The
Church in Nigerian is barely coming out of COVID-19 to now face CAMA-20. Do you
suspect any agenda against the Church as it is being feared in some quarters?
There's really no agenda anywhere per se, if there's
any agenda it is heaven's agenda to purge and cleanse the church. Come to think
of it, why are we so concerned about Islamic agenda when we have a kingdom
agenda we should be focusing on fulfilling? If the Muslims are passionate and
strategic about carrying out their own Islamic agenda, why are we docile about
our own kingdom agenda? It’s time for the church to wake up from the slumber of
prayerlessness, worldliness, shallowness and watered-down Christianity void of
discipleship and kingdom mindedness, and become strategic, intentional and
united about the kingdom agenda as opposed to their individual church and
denominational agenda.
If
the CAMA Law is eventually declared irreversible by the highest court in the
country what does the CAMA law portend for the future of the Nigerian Church?
Already answered... it's time to put our house in
order. For your trustees to turn against you as a pastor, and then 20% of your
real and current members (not old or fake members) to also be against you to
the level of sending a petition to CAC then something must have really gone
wrong, and it means you either don’t have any internal constitution or policy
document to handle crisis management or it has failed. And then for you to be
taken through all the process I itemised above as laid down by the CAMA 2020
and you are found guilty by a court of law, it is justice being done and not
witch-hunting.
Lastly,
what are some lessons that churches in Nigeria should take from the enactment
of the CAMA law and, which other areas should churches in the country correct
themselves in order to avoid further slamming of more laws on churches in the
country by the State (government) in the future?
Like I have stated already.
- It's time to put our house in order
- Go through the provision of the law clearly and
ensure you put structures in place for compliance with organisational
management and global best practices
- It's time
for the church to drop religion and denominationalism and come together to
establish our own internal control system “so we self-regulate and judge
ourselves lest we be judged.”
- It's time to move from Churchianity to kingdom and
stop burying our head in the sand when it comes to the marketplace.
Let’s begin to raise kingdom ambassadors for the
marketplace and start taking over the different spheres of influence lest we
remain as spectators in a world we should have dominion over. When we were
supposed to take over in politics we called it a dirty game When we were
supposed to take over the media we called it the devil's box. When we were
supposed to take over entertainment we called it worldliness When we were
supposed to take over the business and economic we said this world is not our own
etc. It’s time to wake up and wise up, Jesus did not die to give us a religion,
he died to give us a kingdom.
Thank
you for your audience sir…
Thanks for having me, and let all your readers go to
my website www.olumideemmanuel.org to download 2 free e-books title 50 COMMON
MONEY MISTAKES TO AVOID and 50 THINGS YOU SHOULD NEVER TAKE FOR GRANTED. They
should also follow me on all my social media handles and connect to the
broadcast on CAMA 2020 on Instagram @olumidemmanuel by 8pm on Sunday 6th
September. May the Lord perfect all that concerns his church.
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