Esther Longe (PhD) is a transformative leader, pioneering the new movement of the 7000 audaciously. She is committed to providing the necessary structures and motivation to liberate individuals, families and nations from the strongholds of their past, the limitations of their present so that they can be launched into the future that God has scripted for them.
She is a speaker, author, teacher, encourager, coach and a Unicorn leader. As the Unicorn leader, she works with people to embrace their uniqueness as well as discover their strength, joy, calling and anointing in God. She is committed to reconnecting people with God and empowering them to embrace and shine their God given light.
She is the founder of God in Real Life Outreach, a ministry committed to helping people experience intimacy with God and encounter Him in their everyday life. The ministry has several expressions including Broken, God in Real Life, The Alternative Business School (TABS) and the G.O fellowship.
Esther Longe is a trained marketing strategist. She has a BSc. in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos. A Masters in Marketing from the University of South Wales, UK. A Masters in Research and a PhD in Marketing both from the University of Bath, UK.
She has worked with some of the biggest global brands such as PwC, GT Bank, Pizza Express, Wrigleys to mention a few. She has also served as a Super Mentor for the FCMB Sheventures Programme and is a facilitator for the Africa Green Grant award. She is happily married with 2 children.
Growing up
I grew up in a single-parent home with a mum who loves God. The first book I read at age three was the Bible. It was one church programme or the other. We had lots of morning devotions. The good about it was that she was a lecturer at the time and always treasured education. Both of my parents are professors. I gave my life to Christ at five, but at teenage, I was like there is something not adding up about this journey with God because if God is so good, then tell me why the person that we are praying for, ‘oh daddy come home’ is in his own house and family and we are all here?
My mum was a dedicated teacher who was raising two young kids and was unable to and in the university setting, if you don’t publish, you perish. So, my dad was a professor by the time she met him, but my mum didn’t become a professor until 2012 because she was raising us.
Even though I rededicated my life to God, I still had issues with God and those issues did not resolve until about 2014. But growing up with my mum gave me a focus for education. She is a fantastic human being, and she’s someone who supports people. I’ve seen my mum fight for her students, carry people’s matters on her head. She also has a very gentle spirit.
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So, it was almost inevitable that I’ll become the person that I am now because she modeled a very beautiful example for me. In terms of my out-going nature, I get that from my dad.
I began to apply myself to education to the point where I finished the first degree, I have two masters and a Ph.D. so, there was something about the conversation with my mum that was effective and changed my life going forward.
Following in the steps of your parents as Professors?
I don’t have plans of becoming a professor. I actually ran away from academia and it’s such an irony that I’m back teaching people.
Working with global brands
I’ve worked for global brands in Nigeria and the UK and I think that it’s always an interesting experience, especially in advertising. For example, they’re giving you their global standards. So, you already have a template that they would like you to follow to give a ‘glocal’ flavour. I really liked the experience and the exposure you get from working with people who are not just Nigerian based, but who also have global outreach and it’s a wonderful thing to be part of something that is bigger than your immediate environment.
The last marketing role I held was before my Ph.D. We came up with branding materials for food brands and it was an interesting thing to see the things that you have conceptualised in-house being used in restaurants and their products and all of that. It was a great experience.
Misconceptions about marketing
People think that marketing was the same as sales, and I often say, you don’t have to go to school to know how to sell. Anybody can be a natural salesman. Marketing encompasses so much more than mere selling.
Founding God in Real Life Outreach
I was dating my now-husband, and we had conversations and certain things came to light. I had questions for God because I was abused while growing up and had the accident. I remember being angry with God, my father, mother, the abuser and angry with everybody that was involved.
Somebody walked up to me in church and said ‘I just feel that the Lord would have me tell you that He loves your heart.’ I remember going back to where I was leaving and said to God let’s have it out. If you are so good, then why did this happen? Why did that happen? and then God spoke to me using Exodus 19:4, and He showed me literally and figuratively how the devil had tried to kill me to stop me from getting to this point in history. So, that began my intimacy with God. I’ve been a Christian since age five but it was in age 29 that I was entering into intimacy with God.
In September that year in my University, I was talking to God that all these ‘why’ questions that I had, if I had a safe environment to be able to express my ‘why’ questions, I wouldn’t have made the mistakes that I made. So, I decided to create a safe space for people to be able to ask these questions. Come, nobody is going to judge you. We’re going to create a safe space for you to ask these questions and then point you back to God. One of the things God asked me to do was to create a culture of vulnerability. That’s why I share the way I share my story.
What started with 10 people has now evolved with a mailing list of over a thousand people. We’ve had six conferences so far, and so many things have come from just saying yes to God in September 2014.
Why do bad things happen to good people? What would your response be?
We have a very real enemy. God is bigger than the devil. There are spiritual principles and God has the keys to unlock them. So, instead of us ‘fighting’ with God, and saying ‘how dare you allow this to happen to me?’ God expects us to come back to Him and ask ‘how did this happen?’ and He will give you the keys to fight all the bullies that this life has to offer because God says in this life you have many tribulations, but nevertheless, overwhelming victory is yours.
At the end of the day, instead of you fighting God, go back and meet him and say ‘how did this happen? How can I make sure that it doesn’t happen to me and the generation that is coming after me?’ and that’s how we live the victorious life that God wants us to live.
So, bad will happen but God will help us to overcome them if we go back to Him and not fight Him and play even further into the devil’s hands.
Who will you describe as a transformational leader?
I think that my work with God has been a process and the transformation started in me first before He started using me to transform other people. It started on an individual level, helping people overcome strongholds because everybody has a call but there are experiences that we’ve had that has put us in a corner and has caused us to feel that we can only shine in this area but in this other area, God doesn’t answer me so, let me just focus on my career, my children, let me just focus on this and on that.
This transformation starts at the individual level, but we need national transformation. We need to move from talking about the problems of Nigeria and Africa to saying “How can we fix Africa for our children? How can we build a bigger Nigeria for our children?” So, God put this passion for my nation in me. He reminded me about a conversation with El-Rufai (He was the F.C.T Minister at that time) when he said “You have to serve this nation, you can’t just say the nation almost killed you and run to wherever you can go. You have a responsibility to fix this nation for your children and their children and every generation coming after that. So, whatever part you can play, you have to play it” and that’s how my perspective and thoughts about Nigeria shifted. But our love for Nigeria was tested last year nevertheless, we can’t give up. We have to keep going. If we don’t fix it, who will?
People know Nigeria is blessed but the reality is different. What do you have to say about this?
First, I think that we can’t lose hope. Secondly, we can adopt a mentality that is not problem-focused but solution-focused. In our different environment, we can create change. We don’t have to wait for the government to change.
We’re the most resilient people, the most powerful people. Nigerians excel wherever they go. I know the business and ‘ordinary’ people face challenges, but I want to encourage us to be the people that when the doors open for us to go into leadership, we will not go and make the same mistake. Because, last year, when we had all that we had, I looked around I said if they want to clear all our leaders and bring in different people, who are they going to bring? How are you sure that the people that will enter will not make the same mistakes and have the same challenges of integrity?
So, the way to practice for the leadership that we want is to practice in the environment that we are in. How are you being a person of integrity where you are right now? What report will your house help and people working for you have about you as a boss? Nigeria has a glorious destiny and it must enter into it, but what part are we playing?
My survival story
In February 2006, I got posted on NYSC and I remember people were ‘working’ their NYSC and I said I would not do that, but in my mind, I thought the farthest place they could post me to would be Edo State. Only for my class rep to tell me that they’ve seen the NYSC list and I was posted to Sokoto. I was like ‘What!?’ I remember my mum saying ‘oh you are not going’. And I said “If I don’t go in batch A and decide to go in batch B, the probability is that they are going to post me to the exact place”. She then put me on laps and prayed for me.
I would travel on a Wednesday, so my mum started fasting from Monday and she would not break until when she knew that I had landed on Wednesday. The prayers went on for the nine months that I was in Sokoto. I remember I was 21 and I was going to spread my wings so, I didn’t think that I was going to tell her that I was going to travel because I was an adult and adults travel all the time without telling their parents.
This was in October, I and my flat mate were going to see someone who had served with us in camp. I worked in the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) as a duty flight announcer. So, my flat mate and I went to go and visit one of our friends who had served with us in camp and was posted to Abuja. We went to see her for the weekend and as we were leaving, I started buying things I didn’t have in Sokoto.
That morning of the flight, October 29, I remember being woken up so I decided to read my Bible. I was reading Our Daily Bread and the Bible verse was James 4:13-17. They dropped me at the airport and I was waiting for the flight to take off. Because I worked at the airport, I recognised people who were travelling because Sokoto is a state where you are either very rich or very poor. It’s the same set of people who would travel overtime. So, when they got up to go, I followed them.
We got to the plane. You know northern heat, it was very hot and all of a sudden, it started to rain quite heavily. I started thinking to myself and wondered if they could fly in the rain. But I also thought to myself that I was sure they don’t cancel flights each time it rains. So, we got on the flight and then I heard somebody call me quite clearly Esther Kema Oda (my name at the time), and it was Esther Jeyibo . She was supposed to be coming back a week later but for some reason, she was coming back a bit early. So, she called me, and usually, for someone who was already upset for not sitting in front of the plane, Esther who was sitting at the back now called me to come sit beside her and I didn’t want to but I heard a voice saying to me “Esther be nice to people because you never know when you will need them”.
I actually said hi to her and ended up sitting beside her at the back of the plane. So, we took off and we were gaining altitude, and all of a sudden, the plane drops, and we thought it was just turbulence, but it drops again. The inner lights had gone out, children were crying, Muslims are shouting Allah, Christians, Jesus. But we still think that it’s really bad turbulence.
So, I look out of the window and see lightning and heard a loud noise and I look back and in front of me is grass. The plane had crashed. People ask me, did I black out or anything like that? I said “no”, but what I do say to them is that before that day, I had always believed in God, but that day, I believed in the ministry of Angels because literally, the same way I was in the sky, was the same way I was placed on the ground. Why this is remarkable is that Esther that was sitting next to me, the impact of the crash landed her somewhere else.
I didn’t know where we were. I was trying to unhook myself when I heard somebody call for help and it was Esther. So, I unhooked her and we came out of the debris of the plane and it was still raining and we didn’t know where we were. I saw a Muslim girl who was shouting for her brother. I thought the plane had broken in half and they were somewhere else. I remember her hand was broken and saying to her that at least you’re alive and your brother is fine wherever he is which didn’t turn out to be the case. I saw three ladies, one on top of each other. They were shouting for help. I saw this guy sitting and in my mind, I was like “Dude! We’re all in shock and we need help”. It was later I realised that he couldn’t have done anything because his legs were broken”. Those three ladies turned out to be the daughters of the Kogi State governor (At that time). So, I unhooked them.
By this time, Esther had come out of the debris of the plane and villagers had come. We now realised that what had happened was that the plane had crashed outside of the airport but the people in the airport did not know that the plane had gone outside of the airport. So, the villagers ran to the airport to get a van and came back with a white pick-up van which took the three of us that were able to move.
I called my friends and told them what had happened so, they came to get me and took me to a private hospital.
Shortly after, my mum called me and said “Esther, the airport in Sokoto must be crazy because I heard a plane that was coming to Sokoto crashed”. I said “Yes, it’s crazy”. I didn’t tell her that I was on the plane. But then, my flat mate who had gone with me to Abuja was waiting for the plane to drop us in Sokoto and come back to Abuja and take her to Lagos, but that never happened because the plane didn’t make it so Sokoto.
So, her parents went to greet my mum for surviving the crash. I said to myself, “how can you go and greet somebody that does not know her daughter was on the plane?”
So, I had to call my mum and said the plane crash that happened had me in it. She gave the phone to my brother and said she did not know what I was saying. I was later told that she looked in the mirror and said, ‘God, why?’ And God said to her, “My grace is sufficient for you, and my strength is made perfect in your weakness”, and that’s what she held on to.
The next thing, I was told I had to leave the private hospital and go to the government hospital where they were treating the survivors otherwise they would say that I died and they couldn’t find my body.
So, I went back to the government hospital, I was there for three days because they wanted to make sure I didn’t have any internal bleeding, which I didn’t have to the Glory of God.
The next day, I wake up by 4: a.m. and CNN was carrying the story and what we realised was that the only part of the plane that survived was the tail end where I was in.
Out of the 106 people that were on the plane, only nine survived, and out of the nine, only one didn’t have any injuries, that one was me. I was depressed for two years but God broke that.
As an abuse survivor, encourage someone who has been abused
Until someone has been through abuse, you really don’t understand what you’re talking about. For me, this abuse happened at age four and I blocked it from my mind and it wasn’t until I was with my boyfriend (now husband) that he started getting me to talk about situations that had happened to me as an adult. He would say, “Oh! It makes sense now, it is because of the abuse”. I would say “No, it doesn’t make sense. How can something that happened to me at age four be affecting me at age 29?” Until I read a book called Healing in Hurting Places by Caren Hilley, and her experiences were mirroring experiences that I’ve had.
I wondered if what my husband meant was that my experiences were responsible for what had been affecting me. So, it’s not as if people want to relive it or be in that state, they don’t realise that if you don’t deal with that stuff, it’s going to be affecting you whether you admit it or not. So, it gets to a point when you have to address it and heal from it.
You need to speak up, don’t let anybody silence you. Now, beyond speaking, you need to heal and when you heal, it must be your life’s work to bring other people into healing. If you are there and you’re feeling like you don’t understand what’s going on, you don’t understand where your life is going, look at me, if God can do it for me, He can do it for you. If God can turn my story around, He can do it for you.
But do you know what? You need to stop fighting Him. The solution you are asking for is with Him. So, do therapy because it helps you to live in the present, but God helps you to prepare for a future He has suited for you.
Go through therapy, but after therapy has stopped, that’s when your work with the Holy Ghost begins and God will now show you that there is much to live for, there is a glorious future, that’s why the devil has been fighting you.
I’m rooting for you and your success. The world has need of you and you are going to shine, so please, shine!
Women supporting women, how realistic?
My first job in advertising, I had a boss called Angela, which is a derivation from ‘Angel’, but this lady was the complete opposite of her name. It was a horrible experience. She made grown men cry. But I have also experienced the support and love of women. There are so many people that God has blessed me with, but I always tell people that there will be bad apples and so on, but if you now begin to change yourself because of those bad experiences, you close your heart from the good experiences that God has for you.
It’s up to us now to make sure we’re creating an environment that fosters blessings, progress, that makes celebrating another person easy. It doesn’t take anything from you to help and celebrate the next person. The more you actually help people, the more influence expands.
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