I was reminded of this by a sermon today by Dr Tunde Adegbola at our Church The Bridge Network City Church, Ibadan Nigeria but before I give you an overview and application of the sermon principles to our country today, I must tell you this story about a visit of Dr Myles Munroe to this same country many years ago
As it usually happens, a lot of influential people like to have private meetings and an opportunity to meet with this great man of God. One of them happens to be the managing director or a very senior manager of one of our nations leading bank at the time
Dr Myles has a characteristically simple way of applying kingdom principles to all parts of life but when he begins to ask this gentleman what the mission and vision of the bank was? He begins to spew out the intellectual written version of the banks statement
An unimpressed Dr Myles stops him in his track and says the most important value, mission or vision of any bank is trust and without that the entire banking system collapses. It’s scary that our bankers and their leaders don’t seem to understand this including the central bank
Ironically a similar thing happened with a senior immigration official who visits Dr Myles with a similar question. Dr Myles explains to him that immigration officers are the countries gatekeepers and represent a crucial part of building the image of the country
Policemen like Firefighters get a surprise when they too realize that their jobs are not limited to arresting criminals or putting out fires but preventing them from happening which usually includes education on fire prevention for instance, would greatly reduce fires and particularly in nigeria and for the police arresting people for vehicles documentation will not prevent accidents
Bottom line we don’t have an understanding of what we are doing as a nation, a people and I dare say as the Church. We don’t seem to understand our responsibility especially when we don’t see that addressing these issues are critical and have long term consequences.
Vusi Thembakwayo recently analyzed the cost of corruption as follow in a interview (link below)
Actually, JJ, I think most people have mischaracterized the true cost of corruption. I don’t think the true cost of corruption rather, let me say differently. I don’t think the most expensive line item in the cost of corruption, right? Is what it what it’s done to the economy.
I think it’s what it’s done to sentiment and what it doesn’t have talent. In other words, when you corrupt a system, those less deserving get opportunities to which they are not deserving.
The problem is that those who are deserving pick up a little green document colour passport, they get on a plane and go and they leave. Now there are some people watching this will go, No what, they must go.
Let me tell you why that is the dumbest, most nonsensical thing I’ve ever heard people say, when you say JJ must go. JJ is born in South Africa, the South African state educates him for 18 years to get his metric. Then that same South African economy, yeah, has built institutions of education.
Let’s assume JJ gets a master’s. It’s another five, six years of it. 24 years invested. And you’re going to say to him: He must just go . Yeah. What Tom normally so yeah, like it was just flushing that investment down the drain.
And so what’s happened now, if it’s not the same emigration to the Western Cape, that’s a separate conversation altogether. It’s the proper integration.
The number of South Africans who have sat in this chair living in Canada today would alarm you sure number who’ve moved to Australia with alarm you, the number I bumped into her neighbours of mine in the Middle East will alarm you, right?
Because what talent does when you distort this thing about effort versus reward is talent goes where it will be rewarded. My goodness doesn’t have to put up with the nonsense. It gets on a plane. And it leaves. Yeah, no direct sales going overseas.
But I think the point is, the degradation is slow, right. So you don’t feel it immediately. Yeah, but trust me, let me let me let me end it by saying this. If you looked at the top 100 investment bankers in Wall Street today, you’d find a healthy percentage of them are Nigerians.
The top brain surgeons in the world today healthy percentage of them Nigeria’s the top investment banking lawyers in the world today, healthy percentage of them Nigerians Sure, what does that tell you?
How is it that Nigeria is struggling with the issues are struggling with, but some of the smartest people in the world are Nigerians? And then you look at where you’ll find those Nigerians. And typically, it’s not in Nigeria.
It means you’ve got this incredible base of talent, whose skills competence and abilities are being harvested by another economy and not theirs.
– Vusi Thembakwayo on The True Cost of Corruption
Dr Tunde Adegbola’s conclusions now puts it all together below;
The saddest video I’ve seen this week is that video of rotten plantains in the market. I’m not an economist but I have a feeling that it is going to have a knock on effect because there is this thing they call value chain
it starts from some somewhere and some people build on it and others build on it and build on it and then ends up as food on our tables and we use it to do cerebral work but there is now a break in the chain
People in the banking sector, know how much it costs to get certain people in certain social brackets to use banking services. They do campaigns, they go to the market, dance, bring acrobats and give them attractive packages for them to come and save money.
Banking depends to a very, very great extent on trust. And if that trust has been disappointed, it takes a lot to get it back. What we are doing in this country at present, we do not understand the implications yet.
First of all, all those farmers whose next set of plantains have ripened and the ladies who come to buy them do not have money to buy. So the ones in the markets have rotted. Those who consume them to get energy to do other thing are now looking for alternatives.
Now, above all these, people are then beginning to doubt the banking industry they are beginning to feel it is possible for us to have money in this place and we may not get it. We better keep the cash that we have under our pillows and now armed robbers be some aware there is cash available.
So all these stupid nonsenses that we are doing that we do not understand that communities states, when people come together to say we live together under these regulations or more correctly Civilization
People come together to say we want to live our lives as civilians, not people solving problems with violence as the mean of civilization. And that’s why so just call some of us sometimes bloody civilians.
This means those of you who solve problems by thinking rather than by saying this is the way I want it. So when you build a civilization, it is a trust affair. That piece of paper we are carrying around, we call money. What it says it says the state promises to give you the equivalent value of this thing.
Meanwhile, the idea of a cashless society is not an anathema. It has its value but a cashless society in a situation where the system this structure that should carry it is not there.
And when I talk about things like this with trepidation because I am the technical subcommittee of digital transmission Setup by evacuate television stations from the spaces they are wasting so that they can have more efficient delivery of services and use the spaces they evacuate for more modern telecommunication facilities.
That is the situation where we find ourselves one in which I tell myself God says fear not. Where you can go to meeting and not be able to make impact. So we should know that all these little things we are doing wrong here and there going to have a long lasting effect.
And we should start taking steps back and start looking at them in a different way understanding that each little wrong that each of us do of compounding and causing very big problems
As Christians called of God, people who are known by the name children of God it’s means little Christ, followers of Christ. We owe our society, the minimum duty and responsibility to be worth the name we call ourselves as light of the world and salt of the earth.
We should truly be light in a world that is darkness which will be salt in a world that is putrifying that is the situation we find ourselves now.
Of course our personnel needs are important, and we have to meet them. But we have a bigger responsibility in this situation. To show what God expects of people who are called by His Name.
This is our responsibility as Christians and this responsibility we cannot afford to be derelict in it because it is on us God is dependent and if for any reason, by omission, commission, both or neither.
To let God down. We know that we are in a way bring into not the great sacrifice Jesus invested in a vision to make us worthy of being salt of the earth and light of the world. Let us pray.
– Dr Tunde Adegbola Sermon Extract, Fear Not, Stand Still & Go Forward (link below)
We must go back to the fundamentals and let God lay this axe at the root of our problems and not the leaves
Francis E Madojemu
12th March, 2023
Link to Rotten Plantains Video
Dr Adegbola’s Sermon
Vusi Thembekwayo on the cost of corruption
