Family is the foundation of every society — Okonkwo
05 November 2022 |
3:31 am
Lead pastor, David’s Christian Centre (DCC), Dr. Kingsley Okonkwo, has said that Nigeria lacks the number required for Family Life Practice, even as practitioners in the field don’t have support in this part of the world. Okonkwo made the disclosure at the first Family Life Practitioners ...
Lead pastor, David’s Christian Centre (DCC), Dr. Kingsley Okonkwo, has said that Nigeria lacks the number required for Family Life Practice, even as practitioners in the field don’t have support in this part of the world. Okonkwo made the disclosure at the first Family Life Practitioners conference held recently at the church in Elegushi, Lagos.
The conference is part of efforts aimed at equipping and training the practitioners in order to contribute to building the home front, which is critical to the development of a nation. The two-day conference featured different sessions covering areas such as pre-marital counselling, infidelity recovery, dealing with addictions, and the business of coaching.
The facilitators include Dr. Kingsley Okonkwo, The Winlos, Bisi Adewale, Paul Foh, Mildred Okonkwo, Hassani Pettiford, Danielle Pettiford, Triciabiz and Christie Bature.
Speaking during the conference, Dr. Okonkwo, said: “Families are getting started every weekend in the world, the average young person dream of getting married, but the issue is that we don’t have enough support system for these marriages. The demand is growing, the need is obvious and we also need to get qualified personnel to assist them,” he said.
While calling for more recognition for Family Life Practitioners, he said: “Once people feel being a Family Life Practitioner will be a distraction to their everyday life, they will not give their best and that’s what we have been suffering in this part of the world; being a therapist or a psychologist is a well-paying profession in other parts of the world, but not in Africa. We want Nigerians to start seeing this as a professional service.”
Speaking on the reason for organising the conference, he said: “For, us, we see it as a great opportunity to train and equip, because it will help both the practitioners and the families. For every 200 couples, we need one counselor, but we are far behind in Nigeria and most of the counsellors are not well equipped so, a programme like this will help us raise a counselling base so that every family can get one as a personal assistant.”
On the theme for this year’s conference, he said: “Everyone comes from a family, so, any crisis in society is because someone is not doing his or her job. If the family get it right, then the people we are pushing into society will be right. The family is the foundation of every society. Family is where the best training happens; not school, not church can raise a child better than the parents. The children spend more time with their parents than in any other place, but parents can’t teach what they don’t know. Children learn more from what we do than what we say, but most parents want to limit parenting to giving good parenting advice. Programmes like this will help counsellors teach parents how to be good parents.”
Speaking on increasing problems in relationship/marriage that is affecting society negatively, one of the facilitators, Hassani Pettiford, said: “There is a breakdown in the male/female dynamic. We are wired differently, but we don’t really take time to understand our spouse and the level of ignorance has created a rift in relationships and that is why the divorce rate is so high.
“Couples have grown from being soul mates to roommates to cellmates and trapped in the marriage of prison. So, we must learn effective communication.
“One of the ways to make a relationship work is to go back to the creator of the relationship, which is God and as long as God is the foundation of a marriage, it will always be in a great place. Part of God’s system is wise counsel and that is why we are here, to train people to make an impact in marriage by giving them biblical, scientific and every other part of skills so they can re-enforce a sound foundation because children mirror what has been modelled for them.”
To the practitioners, Pettiford said: “I charge everyone to be the best version of themselves, to be committed to education, to make an impact all over the world.
Marriage and family are the backbones of the nation. A weak nation is a result of a weak household; a strong household produces strong families, communities, and nations.
“We have a ministry to make impacts in marriages, but we can monetise it too. We can have seven figures of income and give couples what they need, so, it can be mutually beneficial; strengthen family and marriage and we get rewarded for the services we render.”
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