Next month, on the 23rd of April, 2022, Pastor Mrs Bukola Oladiyun, will be 60. But she does not look it. She still looks refreshingly young though she is a grandma.
Last week, City People Publisher SEYE KEHINDE led a team of City People Reporters and Photographers to the Omole Church to talk to her about her new life at 60 and what she makes of the numerous problems facing marriages today.Below are excerpts.
How do you feel
about your new age?
I give thanks to
God because He is the giver of life, so every day we wake we give him thanks. It
is another opportunity of life so I give him thanks.
What thoughts come
to mind when you think about life at 60?
Number one how time
flies, I just want to thank Him for what He has enabled me to do in the time I
have spent so far. It has been God all through and the inspirations from Him
has helped me so far. I trust Him that He gives me more time and that His
presence forever abides with me. I also pray that the inspiration will keep
coming so I can be a blessing to my generation and even when I am gone.
Whatever He allows me to do will still continue by His grace.
How do you plan to
celebrate your 60th birthday?
We just want to
have a worship service, communion service on the 23rd of April. Then we will
visit the orphanage that's more like what we will do.
What is the secret
behind your young look at 60?
That is God and
eating healthy. I am a Health Coach I learnt from Uncle Rev. Tony Akinyemi of
Ralpha Health Institute. We were taught that it is not more Medicine you need
but more Information. Eat right. Minimise consumption of fizzy drinks. Eat more
fruits and vegetables and exercise. I don’t do Sugar. Once you are 40 my
husband will tell you, No sugar, just Water, at best zobo or tiger nut drinks.
How did the work of
God start for you?
I got into the work
of God by simply asking God the question of Purpose. At some point, I became
wary of the situations I see around educational practice. I went into banking,
but while at it, I still was not fulfilled, so I kept asking God His Purpose
for my life. One day He spoke to me to go back to my profession and I told Him
the reasons why I did not want to go into teaching and He said: “okay, with all
those reasons raise me Righteous Generation and start on a Godly page”. All my
life I was brought up in a Christian home, growing up I got to know God more and became closer to God and got to know Him by myself. So every step of
the way, I ask Him for directions. So having gotten a sense of direction, all I
know was to do as instructed. “Raise Righteous Generation of Children” so I
said why not since I was already born again and He has instructed I go back to
teaching. So I started from early years and everything we were doing and still
does are rested in the scriptures. I teach the children how to pray, at some
point I ask the children to skip their breakfast and we pray, by way of
introducing them to fasting and then they go back to have their meal. That is
how the Lord has helped me. At some point again the Lord ministered to me. He
said that He will need me to put my soul in it. There is the educational line
that I studied but I did that even resting on Christ The School I run is a
Christian School so that is still ongoing.
So, when the Clarion
call came I went into Pulpit Ministry. So, with what I studied in school I
biased it into the work of God by reason
of discovery purpose, “Raise Me Righteous Generation of Children” and I have
been raising children using the platform of education in God’s way. So that is
also in a way the call of God.
What inspired Voice
of Joy and Gladness Women International Ministry?
That is another
ministry with its name coined from Jeremiah 33:11. It is not a church but a
support ministry. We organise workshops and training for the various arms of
the family. My assignment in the church is Family Life. So I am the Director of
the Family Life. The church is made up of the family, so the Voice of Joy and
Gladness Women International Ministry came as a result of a vision I had a
couple of years ago. In that vision I saw myself in a very large hall, in the
hall, there were different categories of women. Some were looking tired and
dusty, others were laying their hands on their tummy asking for help and
another one looking weak and tired asking for help. When I came out of that
vision I told my husband about what God revealed to me and He told me that it
is a message and I needed to look into it. I prayed and I sought counsel from
some of our senior ministers who said that I should sit down, write the vision
and then begin to work on it. So, what I do now is to organise workshops not the
normal Sunday Pulpit thing.
These workshops
were on how to teach women to be better, on how to balance career and home and
we organise workshops for the youths, singles and sometimes men. I am also the
Chairman of the Marriage Counselling classes for intending couples and I have
other lecturers who work with me in that regard. Still, under the family life
directorate, we have the Men’s Fellowship and Fellowship that services all
branches of family life.
What do you make of
all the stories going about society on marriages?
The family is the
bedrock of the Society, Church and Mosque because they are made up of many
families. So if the family is dysfunctional, we will have a dysfunctional state
and society. In those days, the community is made of families, where fathers
and mothers alone don’t raise their children. You have Community input, but
these days, you dare not. Even when you send the children to school, you are
not allowed the free hand to really discipline the children. Any attempt is
like you are looking for trouble from parents so everyone does the little they
can. So that alone has affected the quality of the family line. Children that are
unruly cannot be disciplined, yes I am aware that some people can be too high
handed but then “Spare the rod and spoil the child”. You need to discipline
because, in Christian education, discipline is coined as discipline because it
is not just about beating or inflicting injuries on children, it is about
calling them and telling them how things are done via the scripture. So when
they get it right you praise them and when they get it wrong you take them
through the scriptures and show them what the Bible says about behaviours and
sometimes you can engage the use of the cane.
So, now we have
parents who themselves were not properly brought up as parents so the decay is
becoming more and more. And I began to wonder what it is going to be like in
the next decade. So we now see that children don’t even want to get married
because they are already enjoying the benefits of marriage so men just want to
impregnate a number of girls and become Baby Papas. Then the women just want to
be Baby Mama they don’t want to subject themselves to any form of authority. So
that is the situation, some time ago I read about someone who said: “it's my business”.
How you raise your children is my business because children that are well
brought up eventually get married to guys and girls that were not properly
brought up because they like their physique or it looks like they have some
money. By the time a child that is is properly brought up gets hooked with one
that is not, the problem starts. So, we need to do a lot on parenting, first, we
need to ensure our youths understand the meaning of marriage, the principle
that governs it and to know how to pray up the principles. Because
understanding principles and not praying them up will make you unable to optimise
these principles. You pray because the devil does not understand prayer, I
believe there is a dedicated portion in hell that the devil has dedicated some
of his team to attack homes and marriage. Of course, when you are talking about
marriage you are talking of emotions, so where the heart is not settled the
productivity is affected even when one is making it in business and career when the home front is not settled that is a partial success. Time will come
when one will age and one will be slowed down by age. When the children that
one can send on errands have not been properly raised, how much of good results
will one be able to accomplish?
Some parents are bleeding
because they see that their performance is nothing to write home about and
they are worried about what will become of their business empire when they are
long gone. The Lord will help us.
What are your
suggestions in terms of how best to go about these problems?
Firstly, the youths
are very angry and they don’t see any future in our nation, but our nation is
blessed. Everything about our nation is blessed it is just that we need people
who are settled and who get their priorities right. Please place value on
lives. As far back as when my husband graduated he had unemployment issues. I
remember he will go from Dopemu and he will be looking at the signboard.
Anywhere he saw
buildings with Civil Engineering Companies, he will take their address down and
write an application until God miraculously settled him. As far back as then
and we are now grandparents, I want to believe that we should work on our database. We know how many children graduate and all these ministries are linked.
Ministry of health linked with education, population and the likes. So if we
know how many children were born in 2021 add six years and figure out what they
will be needing and make it available. In another 10-15 years, they should be
in high school, get facilities available. For the ones in the University all over Nigeria. Figure out their number instead of just churning graduates
with no job. For instance, the UK has opened its doors for medical doctors and we
saw them going in troops, so who is left to take care of the Nigerians here? Is
it the old consultant who are tired and are supposed to be resting?
So we need to
gather our resources and put them to good use. Let the youth know that there is
hope, Nigeria is blessed. There is nothing happening overseas that cannot
happen here, here we have Oil, human and natural resources. I think we are too
blessed that is why we are playing around. There in winter, when by 2-3pm there
is already darkness who will tell them not to have a light? But here, because
from morning to 6-7pm everywhere is still bright. There is no time of the day
or year it suddenly becomes dark by 2pm so we don’t care if there is light or
not. Right now, without power generation, there is a limit to progress the
nation can record. These youth need all of these, so hospitals and the
likes should just be in place. What is happening abroad that cannot happen
here? Who are the best doctors and surgeons overseas? Yet we have our own going
to do menial jobs and to distribute food overseas. Is it cheap to nurture a
child till he graduates from university? It is not a one day job so having
gone through the University we begin to export them which leads to brain drain.
What is the hope of this nation? If only we can gather our resources and use
them well and let madness go. How many cars do you want to drive? How many bags
of rice do you want to eat per time? Why are we not thinking about the future?
How many clothes do you want to wear at a time? Because if you wear more than
one, one is classified as being mad, so what is the point of wasting resources.
Asides from that, let's reassure the youth that there is hope in our nation. We
should encourage them to acquire skills and not just go into relationships. I
don’t know if they do that in Mosque for people to know the responsibility in
marriage before they go into it.
It is not all about
the wedding, but about the responsibility so they need to let them know their
responsibility to their spouse, children and their society. So the training has
to be ongoing from childhood.
How have you and
Papa found the balance?
That is talking
about Personality. His personality is quite different from mine and so we
understand our different temperaments. There is no personality that is really
bad or completely good but each personality has its strength and weakness so we
understood the strength and areas of weakness. So in my areas of weakness, he
deploys his strength and in any area, he needs my strength I deploy my strength.
What kind of a
person is he?
My husband is
someone who knows what he wants and he is always all out to get it. He has
alternatives, if it looks like this one is not working he always has an
alternative to achieve that set goal. He is generous, kind-hearted and wants to
help everybody and wants to bring out the very best in you, to accomplish God’s
purpose.
How did you achieve
a balance?
I have lived with
my husband for over 30 years and I have come to realise that if he wants to
give you something, he gives you. If he wants to give you something to go and
trade with it, he wants results, not stories. If you are having issues revert
and tell him and he is willing to help. I have understood that about him so I
try to balance. He knows my limit.
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