Nike Adeyemi, living her faith, doing more beyond the altar

Nike Adeyemi is a global speaker and minister, a voice of love and healing to nations. Nike inspires leaders to be authentic, compassionate and courageous. She speaks passionately with the aim to liberate, heal and empower individuals, organisations, communities and nations.

She is driven to share God’s love in practical ways through her TV broadcast, ‘Real Woman with Nike Adeyemi’ which is viewed locally and globally, and through her Podcast, ‘Conversations With Nike Adeyemi’.

Nike is the president of Real Woman International Inc. A 501c non-profit organisation. She founded The Real Woman Foundation, Nigeria, which shelters and trains trafficked and abused ladies. She also has the Love Home Orphanage.

Beneficiaries from these programs are doing great in their new families and communities around the world.

Nike holds the Master of Architecture and Master of Business Administration degrees, and attended the Harvard Business School Executive Program. She is also a John Maxwell Certified Coach.

Adeyemi is on the faculty of the Daystar Leadership Academy. She co-founded Daystar Christian Centre, Lagos, Nigeria, a multi-faceted church with a vision to raise role models, with her husband, Sam Adeyemi. Together they have three amazing young adults.

Share with us your memories of childhood and its influence on you

I grew up in a small family of four. I was born in the city of Ibadan in Nigeria so, I’m an Ibadan girl. My dad is from Shagamu, Nigeria, and my Mum is from Ibadan. I grew up in Ibadan, I am the first of four siblings and when I look back, I realise that I was unconsciously being prepared for leadership. I’m the first born, my husband also happens to be the first born.

We grew up on the campus of University of Ibadan because my dad is an academic. Both of my parents are 82 years old now, they’re both alive. My dad eventually became a Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Science. I remember there was a year he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, because his major was Chemistry. He was a scientist; he was always researching on different things like sickle cell or one thing or the other. We grew up in an academic environment and I didn’t think I’d go along those lines.

My Mum was an administrative secretary with an organisation that was located on the university campus, but it was not really part of the university. According to them, that was where she met my Dad and vice-versa and like they say, the rest is history. My Mum is a sanguine; an extrovert, my dad is more cerebral and serious, but we just grew up with that love, with friends and all of that. So here I am, and I can say that my foundation helped me a lot.

Why was Architecture your course of choice?

When I was in secondary school, I loved Technical Drawing (TD), Maths, and also did well in Physics and Geography. My friends felt I could do Architecture, because many of them didn’t like Technical Drawing. I am very creative, I create a lot. I draw. They felt all of that combination is what Architecture is about and I went with it. But my Dad would tell me years later that he subtly tricked me into it. I didn’t know, he didn’t tell me about it at that time but he said he exposed me to it because I remember that every 6 years, he would go to the US and be there for a whole year on what you call sabbatical, and he would be working with another university. So we had the opportunity of living in the US for one whole year and going to school. He said he would show me buildings, and claimed to have guided me in that way without my knowledge. I am glad I took on the challenge. Today, I have a first Degree in Architecture and also hold the Master of Architecture Degree.

Read also: 100 Women in Finance: Offering Nigerian female CEOs a platform for international exposure

What necessitated the birth of The Real Woman Foundation?

I started the Real Woman Foundation in December 1997 around Christmas. That December, I went into a brothel to give them food for Christmas. So prior to that, weeks before then, I had been concerned about prostitutes and girls on the streets, especially around the area where we were located.

I wasn’t judging them. If you know me, I’m not and have never been judgmental. I believe it was compassion and love that drew me to them because I believe that they did not know what they were doing. So it wasn’t a judgemental belief, it was more to me like they were not doing well for themselves. I knew it wouldn’t be wise to just walk up to them. So one day, I was talking about the burden I had for them and one of our Pastors mentioned that he knows one brothel somewhere and he showed me the place. I went in in my jeans. It was in the Oregun area and I just stood in the hallway looking for someone to talk to. This girl came out, told me her name was Sandra (they never use their real names anyway, we discovered that much later), so I chatted her up. Even though I had told her I came to see someone just to catch her attention, I later opened up to her and started telling her how beautiful she was and asking her what she was doing there. I convinced her she could do better. I told her I had other options for her. So we started to talk right in front of her room. She leaned on the wall beside her room door. After a while, a lady passed by, one of the girls there, with her towel wrapped around her and holding a bucket, obviously heading to the bathroom and I can never forget how she said “Sandra, na born again?” That was her question. Sandra said I was her sister. She was my first convert as I ministered to her, and presented other options to her. I talked with her that day, led her to Christ and she became my first friend in that place.

I’ll cut the whole story short. That’s how the Foundation was formed because I got this idea that if I had a home for them, put in bunk beds, have a young lady or an older lady live in with them and help train them, it will make good impact. Part of the plan also included that I’ll come in there, give them talks, motivate and encourage them. They’ll have tea, eggs, all the food they can eat, and just be loved back into wholeness. They will learn vocational trades, hairdressing, computer schooling, have people come teach them bead making and so on. Guess what? 3 years from then, that is exactly what happened. I was able to have a home for them.

Tell us about the Love Home Orphanage

Sometimes we have girls who come already pregnant. Once they deliver, some would leave their babies and go. Also, we started seeing babies around too so my administrator advised that we create something for children and that is how the Love Home orphanage was birthed.

Take us through the mind of a Pastor’s wife

Wow! That’s a touchy one, and I’ll try to answer it. First of all, I’ll start by saying that there may be two types of pastor’s wives, first of all, so that I don’t generalise. There are introverts and extroverts. My husband is an introvert and I am an extrovert though I could also have times that I am introverted. For me at home, I talk and this is where some pastor’s wives are of a different temperament or background, they don’t talk. It pains me for pastor’s wives who can’t talk to their husbands. I don’t know how the relationship came about, maybe because he was already a pastor when you married him? It isn’t like that for me and I am sure there are several others like me. I respect my husband and in the house we’re like twins. I speak my mind including how I feel I was treated. I communicate with my husband efficiently. So pastor’s wives, please talk to your husbands, be humble, don’t engage him in fights, don’t bottle things up, don’t feel that you have to always go with the flow, speak your mind to him respectfully, tell him the truth, it is the manner you speak to him that matters. In marriage, we are given for each other’s protection. The husband is to protect his wife and the wife is to protect her husband, not necessarily out there but the protection inside where you’re missing it.

As a leadership coach, Nigeria’s major election is next year, how important is it for leaders to get it right, what should the youths do, and what do you have to say on the forthcoming election?

Nigeria, my beloved country. It feels good to say 2023 is next year because it’s closer and also because it seemed so far from that time of #EndSars, and honestly, I wasn’t sure if we would make it to 2023. That’s the honest truth. I am praying that there’ll be a smooth transition. But now that it’s around the corner, we see candidates coming out to run for office. I’m hopeful and I’m expectant that we will do better and our leaders will do better and we will elect better. As Nigerians, we must step up, the youths must also step up. I see a lot in entrepreneurship among them though constrained by power, by internet and so on. A while ago, Twitter was shut down and they found a way around it using VPN. The Nigerian youths are creative and I encourage their creativity and advise that they never allow themselves to be stuck.

As a nation, it is good to have great leaders but you must also be the great leader of your life. Youths must take the responsibility of leadership in their hands, and so we’ll be looking to you for leadership. Don’t be proud. Don’t be bitter. Don’t be proud to be bitter, because that will hamper your creativity and your productivity. You can hold your leaders to accountability but you do not have to insult them to do so, because two wrongs don’t make a right.