On a Rescue Mission
As a social entrepreneur, a non-governmental organisation, Breach Repairers, for over seven years built solid ethical values amongst youths who will give a strong footing towards its mandate of raising a new generation of Nigerians. In furtherance with its bid to achieve this and more, the organisation has come up with a National Parenting Conference tagged, “Critical Rescue”. Mary Ekah writes on the essence of the event billed to hold next Friday in Lagos
“The Breach Repairers, as the name indicates, are the repairers of the broken edge and breach because we believe that a few things have been broken in our society, our nation and perhaps the world”, the Chief Host of the event and Chairman of the organisation, Pastor Ituah Ighodalo sets off the tone at press briefing to herald one of its national parenting conference tagged, ‘Critical Rescue’, one of the Breach Repairers’ strategies to build moral and ethical values in the youths.
Buttressing the urgent need for ‘Critical Rescue’, the Senior Pastor of Trinity House Church and Managing Partner at SIAO, a firm of Chartered Accountants and Management Consultants, said, “Today we have various religious surges in the nation and around the world, kidnapping and all sorts of things that threaten our security and even till today, we are still looking for over 200 girls that were suddenly kidnapped from their boarding school about two years ago and we still cannot find them. Not just that, we are also looking for a whole lot of children who will not actually realise that they have been lost; they are found all over the streets roaming here and there – people of great potentials who we now refer to as area people.”
The cleric who spiced up his elucidation with a story in the Bible of two women for which King Solomon of the Bible received wisdom from God to recue an almost destroyed innocent child from their hands, noted “Suddenly two women, came to Solomon with a problem. They had slept so much that one of them had slept on her child and killed the child, so the child was lost. The other one had slept so deeply that her child was taken from her side and she didn’t realise it. In like manner, we are in a nation where both men and women are sleeping; some of them have slept so deeply that they have with their own hands destroyed their children.
Some of them are sleeping so deeply that the devil has stolen their children from them and they do not even realise it. These women in the Bible story, had to come to the King of kings, the only one who has wisdom and who decided that somehow he will spare at least one of the children – the child that was under dispute, which was itself almost destroyed as one the women were even ready to destroy that child. But the most important thing is that they were both sleeping so deeply that havoc had come on both their children.”
Ighodalo said that there was an urgent need for Nigerians to come back to a nation where we can repair the breach save our children and our adults and thereby save the nation. “There are problems all over the world, and Christianity especially has come under attacks from external and internal aggressors and even by government where they have taken prayers and things like that out of the schools”, he added.
He stressed that at Breach Repairers, what they are trying to do is to bring up children, not basically along Christian value as such but along ethical and moral values; “along values that will ensure that the children survive and that the parents also will survive and our nation will survive.” He noted that the National Parenting Conference billed to hold on Friday, May 6 and Saturday, 7 at the Guiding Light Assembly, Parkview, Ikoyi, Lagos, is geared towards equipping parents, teachers, pastors and other stakeholders to tackle some of the challenges and also properly give the youths direction.
“We have assembled seasoned and experienced instructors to aid us teach parents, teachers and stakeholders techniques for building character pillars in our today’s Nigeria youth, our hope for a better and greater Nigeria”, he added.
Ighodalo who said that Breach Repairers is a non-governmental organisation established seven years ago, noted; “seven is the number of perfection and completion. So we feel we have come into a place of completion, a place of maturity, a place where we have move forward by His grace.”
The cleric said that the has for seven years tried to build the pillars of purity, purpose, and productivity (3Ps) amongst young people across religious groups, schools and youth group boot camps.
“We believe that these character pillars being in place will give a strong footing towards our mandate of raising a new generation of Nigeria youths that understand their God given mandate, which are socially responsible and have integrity with a resolve to bring a refreshing and positive leadership wherever they find themselves.“
He explained that the organisation focuses mainly on 3Ps (Purity, Purpose and Productivity), noting, “We focus on purity because we now live in a society where we do not know right from wrong and that is why we consider purity and things that we consider ethically right because the Bible says righteousness promotes and exalts a nation and it says doing things in a pure way is what will eventually bring about upliftment. We also focus on purpose because everyone has a purpose in life and we all must try to find that purpose and fulfill that purpose because that is what gives a person the energy, the boost, the ability to see life through, and not what you acquire, it is what you are able to deliver. And of course, we focus also on productivity. Again, if you are going in line of your purpose and you are working hard, by His grace, you must be productive, that is what we call adding value to self and to society.
“We are dealing with young people across religious groups – we are non-religious. We have a foundation based on Christianity but we are non-religious. We appeal to every colour and creed all across the globe. All we want for people to do things right”, Ighodalo added.
The cleric who said the organisation has a twofold approach to dealing with the issues that have to do with youths, noted, “From time to time we have focused on the children and teach the children the best that we can do in our conference and we also focus on the parents so that the parents can spend a lot more time on their children. A lot of time the parents are too busy trying to make their own way in life, too busy trying to achieve, succeed and solve their own problems that they abandon those children to wilds of the world”, he posited, while adding that, the organisation has decided this year to include government because before now most of its efforts have been private based. “Now we want to talk to government so that government can hear what we are saying and the cry of our children and thereby be a lot more sensitive to getting what we call a total Nigerian child”, he noted.
He explained that this year’s conference has been appropriately tagged, ‘Critical Rescue’, because steps must be taken to rescue most children and economy. “Our economy is in dire state of rescue. In Nigeria, we should no longer be importing food and so I am happy that our president is moving in that direction and given the milestone, if I were him, in three years, there should be no more importation of foodstuff. We must produce, eat and export. Our economy is in need of rescue; the petroleum sector is in need of rescue. We should be manufacturing our own petroleum products here in Nigeria and no longer importing them. And in three or four years, this should be the case and the state of security of our nation should be looked into. The infrastructure needs to be worked on. Our rail system should be worked on.
So, critical rescue of our children, critical rescue of our economy, critical rescue of even of our adults and critical rescue of our nation and our national monuments, are urgently needed. In Nigeria, we should have uninterrupted power, so it is time for critical rescue”, Ighodalo declared, noting that the forthcoming conference is directed on children, parents and other stakeholders to be part of the critical rescue mission and to build the character pillars of our Nigerian child.
To grace the event are wife of the Vice President, Mrs. Dolapo Osinbajo who will declare the conference open and would also give the keynote address; wife of the Lagos State governor, Mrs. Bolanle Ambode who will be giving the welcome address and then the First Lady of Ogun State, Mrs. Olufunso Amosun, who would be giving the conference speech. Also the First Lady of Akwa Ibom, Mrs. Martha Udom, who will eventually declare the conference closed
