The families of Enoch and Bridget Agbate; Charles and Carol Ighele last week gave their blessing to their children, Clementina Agbate and Oghale Ighele in holy matrimony at the Marcellina’s Place, Ikeja GRA, Lagos. Charles Ighele, the presiding bishop and general superintendent of Holy Spirit Mission (aka Happy Family Centre), who also is the father of the groom, spoke on Godly marriage and its implication on the Church. Excerpts by SEYI JOHN SALAU:
What are the implications of Godly and successful marriage on the Church and nation building?
My wife and I hosted the first marriage and family TV programme in this country in 1995, in Benin; people in the South-South watched it; governors watched it; they came to our home for one thing or the other over this. So, I am speaking as a marriage and family counsellor; I am speaking from that very angle.
You won’t see the bad boys and bad girls where people are well brought up, but once the home is in disorder, the nation is in total disorder. There are seven institutions that define culture, how people behave. Number one is the family; that is where a child is born into. Two, the spiritual, the child is either going to church or going to the Mosque; so you see a culture being formed. Number three, you see education.
When the family is shaky, education is not okay in the country, then you see the aspect of spirituality, you see people not taking it seriously, doing anyhow, people getting alert prayers, you know. Do this; drop N1000, God will give you N1million; this is a sign of a country going into decay. So, you see the spiritual seriously being tampered with in Nigeria. We now go to entertainment which also defines culture. When those in the entertainment industry are those that have no values for women, then the children imitate them.
Then the media shapes how people behave in their country. The media is so powerful like the Novelist and Playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote in 1839, in his famous historical play Cardinal Richelieu; he said that the pen is mightier than the sword. So, the media is so powerful, that is why you see politicians wanting to have media houses because the media want people to think how the owner wants them to think; so they build the culture.
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You also see politics and government, so those in government; determine so many things, so they contribute to how people behave. Then business and commerce, those in that area, that is why somebody like Dangote, Femi Otedola can define how people behave; so these are the seven main areas that shape culture.
Nowadays, the family is seriously faulty, where parents will give money to teachers for their children to pass school certificate examinations; then the family is gone. So, that is why people like us from next year, I am going to take it so seriously to mount a campaign in this family area, a campaign the whole nation will hear of, as a solution to family problems.
As a marriage counsellor, what role should parents play in bringing their children up in the fear of God to deepen the institution of marriage?
If you want to pass values to your own children, then you have to redefine your values; what really do I want in life? What do I value: parents should look at, what are the values they want to pass on to their children even to the last generation? Twice a day, very rare, but at least once a day, I pray for my bloodline, that is, children that come through me to the last generation. I pray for every one of them, even those that are not yet born. So, I have to redefine my values, what do I stand for.
What do I want to gain, what do I pass on; the buildings you put up you won’t see them again, 100 years if the Lord tarries, so what is it? You have to pass on something positive along the bloodline. So, I advise parents to, first of all, think about the future; be God-fearing, itemise them, and see how you can pursue them with the fear of God.
As a preacher, what is the best approach for parents, especially fathers in relating with their children?
He is not the only one among my children; that is who they are, the one that wedded last year in the US, at 25 a virgin, that is who they are. I make them my friends, there is a girl right now who we adopted as our child, she never had sex before, now in the university, final year, but in secondary school, she met my wife and said mummy, I have feelings towards one boy. It is not easy for a child to meet her mother and say I have feelings for one boy.
So, now we created an atmosphere of friendship with the children, that they are able to tell us the temptations they are passing through, and not to warn them; instead of the warning I give to my daughters was this: if you mess up sexually, I won’t like it, don’t try it, I would not like it. But in case you don’t hear what I am telling you and you misbehave and then you get pregnant, that child – I will take care of that child. Instead of just warning and warning and warning, they saw the love more than the stick, so with this when they are tempted, they say no, I can’t disappoint my Daddy.
What is your advice to the couple as they begin their matrimonial journey?
I am from a polygamous home, I never saw love between my Dad and my Mum, I never saw them hug or kiss, but I made up my mind that my marriage is going to be different. I am going to love my wife as the bible said I should. So, as a Christian, the bible is what I try to keep faith with, and that is what made lots of members of our church have some respect for me. They know I will not bend the rules even if I face my child. So, as a couple, they should first of all be friends, me and my wife.
We can go on holiday for two weeks alone in the same room, nobody else there, and we are enjoying ourselves, I am 66 and she is 64, we kiss, we hug, we are romantic. But I was not like that, I never saw it; but I said I am going to make it happen. How? By practising it; doing it deliberately.
If you do something good deliberately, then nothing bad with it; deliberately I forced myself to say I love you, I forced myself to do all those things and then it became part of me. And today, my children say I am romantic. That is what they say. So, while we were younger I could carry her, dance with her, kiss her, lift her up. That is why all my children want to marry early. My first daughter married at age of 21, and they all want me to join them, that is why I conducted today’s wedding, they know me from home, and all my children join them in marriage. They know; we disagree but my children know how I manage crises in between.
They know I love their mum and she loves me too. They know that I believe in love growing, any living thing grows. So, now my love for my wife is more than it has ever been. If it is stagnant something is wrong with me, a living thing should not be stagnant; it should keep growing. So, my love for her grows by doing things, taking her out at least once a week or twice a week, to eat outside, we have caterers, we eat out, chat out, chill out, at least once in a week: we hold, we kiss, we hug and then we say we love each other, and then we put fire in our love. When you don’t put fire in the wood, the fire would go down, so that is how marriages are.
And there are functional marriages which I will never want them to be. Okay, is my food ready? I want to take my bath, is the water ready? Papa pays school fees, pays electricity bills; the father pays the bills, the man plays the traditional functions and the same with the woman and then there is not much apart from when you want to go to bed and you say pull; you say what? I said pull. That is a functional marriage, as a command.
