Baptist Trains Northern Youths on Leadership

By Jide Afolabi, Jos

The Nigerian Baptist Convention, NBC, has trained youths of Baptist extraction in the Northern part of the country on leadership.

The 3-day training was held at the First Baptist Church, Jos, the Plateau State capital. The theme for the training was “Purposeful Leadership”.

The Director, Youth, and Students Ministry, Nigerian Baptist Convention, Rev Dr S.A.K Olaleye opened the first session with “Getting Started (Purposeful Leadership)”. He gave insight into the theme and enjoined the delegates to be purposeful leaders saying that, “a leader without purpose is a leader without direction who does not know the reason for his position.”

He gave the example of purposeful leadership in the Bible to include Joseph, Moses, Joshua, and Nehemiah among others. He identified the qualities of purposeful leadership as preparation, vision, planning, focus, perseverance, courage, influence and sacrifice.

The guest speaker for the training was Rev Japhlet Kyenlong who facilitated sessions on “Building Spiritual Leaders 1 (Leaders and Personality) and Building Spiritual Leaders 2 (Leaders and Personality)”.

The National Coordinator, Youth Ministries Division of the Nigerian Baptist Convention, NBC, Rev Joshua IbukunOluwa facilitated workshop session 1 on “Communication Strategies for Effective Leadership” while Rev Sam Alabi of the same Ministry took the workshop 2 session on “Leadership and Learning.”

Addressing journalists in Jos during the leadership training conference, the National President, Nigerian Baptist Convention Youth Conference, NBCYC, Pastor Enunuaye Onajite thanked the Nigerian Baptist Convention for organising the training aimed at building leaders among the youths. He expressed confidence that the “conference will mark a new beginning in our leadership strides as we will be better equipped for the task ahead”.

He said, “No organisation is better than her leadership. The height of progress this fellowship will ever make; is dependent on our leadership. Let us, therefore, take advantage of this conference to increase our knowledge about leadership. Leadership is purpose-driven, hence, it must involve adequate knowledge to operate. When followers know better than the leaders, leadership purpose has been abused. The leader must know the way, lead and goes the way.”

He urged youths at the training conference to make judicious use of what they have learned so as to be purposeful leaders.

On the state of the nation, Onajite noted that all is not well with the country as Nigeria has become poverty capital of the world coupled with the myriad of challenges in the area unemployment, capitalised and dwindling education standard, worsening infrastructure, banditry, kidnapping, and killings; high inflation, unstable political and economic environment, corruption and epileptic power among others.

He, however, expressed optimism in the country praying that God would raise leaders like Nehemiah to rebuild the broken walls of the nation. He urged leaders at all levels to rise up to the occasion and squarely face the task of leading Nigeria out of the doldrums. He added that the Church would continue to pray for a better Nigeria as we have no other Jerusalem than Nigeria.

The youth leader tasked Nigerian youths to brace up for leadership roles stressing that “we need to bring our youthful energy and 21st Century technological advancement into governance.”