With the high rate of unemployment in the country, the Church of God Mission, Victoria Island, seeing itself as a solution provider, designed the Roundtable-Lekki, an annual conference to serve as a platform to empower people. In this interview with CYRIACUS NNAJI, Rev Chris Ubamadu, the Zonal Coordinator of the church covering Lagos Island to Epe, and the convener of the Roundtable-Lekki, 2025, threw more light on the event. Excerpt:
What is the conference all about?
We set the Roundtable-Lekki as a platform to empower people. We saw the rate of unemployment, people coming out of school, no job, at the back of that we see what poverty is causing everywhere. So we see ourselves as solution provider, we didn’t just want to sit down and pray, after praying we thought we need to do something, the white man says if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish you feed him for life, so our empowerment is not to share rice and beans, our empowerment is to create knowledge, it is to share information, just as we saw, what was being said at the conference, with N50,000, N100,000, or without any money at all, you can start playing in the real estate sector and what does that do for you, it helps the participants to begin to earn income for themselves and their families. And for us, if that happens, that means we have fulfilled our assignment as a church. If we do this and we do it regularly, more and more people will have something they are doing to take care of themselves, that is the vision behind the Roundtable-Lekki and I am glad this year the focus is on the Lekki Real Estate, Opportunities for Everyone. We really wanted them to spotlight the real estate business.
Usually every year, we take a sector, we open it up, we dimension it; we bring people in that sector. Last year it was on how to make money from the social media, all these guys making money on the social media space, we had all of them. A year before it was the entertainment industry, Alibaba, Joke Silver, last year it was on social media, so we had Mr Makaroni, Aproko Dr, Lasis, Elenu, and so many others who play in the social media as a means of income. So what we are doing is to show people, especially young people, you can do these things, no need be dropping CV from year to year, and complaining you have nothing to do, there are things you can do. Today PWAN said come and register free as an agent. It means you go there and you register; anyone you bring, to buy land or property, you get percentage. He told you thousands of people he has empowered through that means; that is just what we are trying to create with this kind of opportunity. So that is what Roundtable Lekki is all about. We saw the representatives of the Lagos State Government, Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development, we saw a Permanent Secretary also coming from Ministry of Housing to tell us what the government is doing in all these areas, so that makes us very happy, that we are able to get people across different sectors, to see and understand how they too can understand how they too can participate, at the end of the day, we want the individuals who participated in this conference whether physical or online to be able to find something they can do to increase their earning capacity. If that happens, poverty reduces, unemployment reduces, families are better off, they are happier, they are able to meet their needs, for us that is mission accomplished. That is what the Roundtable Lekki conference is all about, it is an annual conference.
What is the response level, those that have participated, what are the success stories from those who have participated in Roundtable Lekki?
The unfortunate thing is that we cannot assess the overall impact on society on these parameters that you have mentioned; it is only the government that can answer it. But our joy, like before climbing up here now, people were stopping me on the hallway, thanking me for the opportunity to hear all the things they heard here today. Our prayer is that they will go and implement it, that is part of the value chain that we are filling up, create an opportunity that would make them meet people that would tell them what they need to do to change their lives, to change their environment, we may not be able to gather data in the whole society to know how many people have been affected. If it is two households, five households, 10, 20 households, we are happy. Of course, the 20 households would have remained in abject poverty, unemployment and all of that. We may not completely be able to bring down unemployment in Nigeria, even government struggles with that, so we can’t pretend that this programme is going to, automatically do that, no, it is that one family, and I see them. a couple of times, maybe two months’ time, maybe a year later, somebody comes up to me and says, you see this business after the Roundtable Lekki we started it and see what it has done for me and my family; Oh look at the income I make now because of the information that I got at the Roundtable Lekki, so that is our joy. We may not have the opportunity to measure it in percentage, or it has reduced unemployment by 1% or 2%, we don’t have such data, but that one person that says this programme has helped me is the reason we are doing it.
Are you intentional in the mentorship or is it just a talk shop?
Well I am not going to say it is talk, because at the end of the day, it boils down to the individual what to do with it, so at least even getting to hear from people who are doing it, I have been unemployed for three years, I don’t know what to do and I heard a man who started business with 50, 000, and look at it today, he has a house in VGC, why won’t I like to do like that? Do you understand, but I cannot take him and begin to invest, I don’t have the resources for that, that is the truth, the fact that we even put this together, it is free, nobody paid a dime, because people contributed to make it happen, so how much more can I burden those same people to now say, let’s mentor them one by one? No, for instance you heard PWAN say come and enroll free, normally you pay N75,000, or more or less, to have that membership in their company, but he is making it available today free. So what mentorship can be better than that? You know.
What is the church doing to help members who are interested in investing in real estate?
Creating this kind of platform that we have created, so it is for them now to take the second step afterwards, we can’t force anybody, as I said, we cannot say if you want to go into real estate come and take one, one million, if we had it fine, but today, we don’t. So what is important is you heard the information. At times people don’t know the value of information, normally you pay money to attend conferences like this, but it is free, so that is enough investment from us. It wasn’t free for us to organize, you saw our billboards on the roads, everybody in Lagos knows what it takes to put up one single billboard, you see the advert on the internet, everywhere, it is money to put all these together, I can’t even tell you how much we spent, it is enough investment, so the second leg has to be on individual level. That is the way we designed it.
Did you start with Church of God Mission, how do you feel seeing this happening?
I am a product of Church of God Mission, I got saved in 1987, and I was in Benin, GRA Benin, I was a teenager then, join the teenage fellowship, then from there got to university, I grew from there till this position as the Zonal Coordinator. So for me ministry is beyond preaching on the pulpit. God opened my eyes in 2016 to understand Matthew chapter 5 verse 13 and 14, you are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth; it means we are solution providers. So as Christians we are not just meant to sit down and analyse a problem, we are the solution.
In the days of Joseph, God saw that the earth was going to come under severe hardship for seven years, the next thing God did was to drop the idea into somebody’s mind, and what Joseph did saved the whole world. That is the kind of solution God wants every Christian to provide, so why should we sit down as painful as the situation is, you see what inflation is doing, you see what unemployment is doing, more and more people are getting poor, sitting down and complaining, how does it solve the problem?
So we feel that if Jesus was around, maybe he would do something about the situation, would he only gather people and feed them with fish and bread twice? That means it was not a permanent solution, it is not a sustainable solution. So the permanent solution is open their mind. What we are trying to show people, that the solution to your problem is where you are, you can start something without anything, with your android phone, instead of using to take selfies and posting, you will post pictures of houses that somebody can buy, and you earn an income, am I the one that build the house, no, the same phone you always have, so that is the kind of information we want people to come across. So that is the vision; that is the inspiration driving this Roundtable-Lekki. We can add to solve the problem, we may not be able to solve it completely, but that household, 2,3, 10,20 people that we solve this problem for, it is enough, Jesus Christ died for the whole world; is it the whole world that he saved? No.
Do you advise other churches to do the same?
Oh yes. I advise churches to do something like this, solve societal problems, that is why churches exist; not to clap hands and whatever.
Aside the Roundtable Lekki, do you do other things to empower your members?
Yes, we do other things to empower our members at different levels, we may not gather a whole crowd like this and say everybody take N1, N1million, N10, N10 million, no, but when people join us, and they are in need of support, we have a system inhouse to support them, some people are on scholarship, some families are on scholarship, some are fed monthly, so we do those kind of things from time to time.
An opportunity like this one too, I forgot, the chairman told me, if we want to organize something, we should organise it and he would sponsor it, he wants to empower youths in this area. So once he gives us date now, we go to town and gather young people again, that is empowerment.1st of June, we are gathering people, this one is for career advancement, you’re a professional, how do you climb the ladder? What are those things you need to do to move from the point you are in your organization to a higher level? So how do you improve, how do you grow? A lot of professionals ask those questions, we are bringing people, we are going to teach them free, the one we are having on Sunday, is an impartation service, we are going to focus on preserving the next generation, training a child is more than paying school fees, so we want as parents to pray for our children generally, for God to preserve them, for them to have the right influence, to put spiritual backing to their development. All these are ways we impact on society.
Your advice to other churches
My advice to other churches is to see themselves not as the four wall, church is a very conservative place, unfortunately, and it is not today that it started, if you look at Acts of the Apostles, after Jesus resurrected and said, occupy till my coming, people were selling their properties and coming to live in church. They thought Jesus was coming the next day, let’s stay here, when God discovered these people did not understand what to do he allowed persecution to scatter them. That is how the gospel got here, if not those guys would sit down and be sipping tea, and waiting for Jesus to come. A lot of churches are still doing that till date. Another mistake churches, particularly in Nigeria, do is to focus on themselves, everybody is trusting God for breakthrough, God give me Visa, God let my destiny helper come, that is not why God called us. So it will be nice if churches will see themselves as solutions to societal problems.
Now we are focusing on unemployment, another church can focus on insecurity, another can focus on reducing corruption, another can focus on education; there are so many things to be done.