Everyone can have a good home if we work on our character — Familylifers.com Founder, Adewale
Bisi Adewale is the founder, Familylifers.com, a family forum website built on godly principles of building happy homes and reconciling crumbled marriages with the blend of scientific tools. He is an author of over 100 books on family life. In this interview with AKINYEMI KEHINDE and FLORENCE AYOOLA, he speaks on the tenderness of marriage and key instruments of resolving marriage turbulence. Among other issues he spoke on the need for youth mentorship and the efforts of his ministry in fostering same in addition to efforts in bridging gaps of crumbling homes. According to him, there is no bad marriage, but we only have bad attitudes and bad characters and on that basis he asserted that everyone can have a good home if all can learn the ways and work on the issue of character. Excerpts:
Can you speak on yourself?
My name is Bisi Adewale. I am a family consultant, the founder of familylifers.com. I have authored more than 100 books on marriage and family life. I believe so strongly in raising vibrant family and goldy children. I believe so much in the power of connectivity among humans. I need you, you need me, us need we, we need us. There is no self-made individual. God made man, men made man. I believe that every woman deserves to be nurtured. Every woman is like a flower, that’s why women are called beautiful and not handsome. Flowers are always beautiful. You don’t say woods are beautiful; wood can be strong. Women are flowers; when you water her, she glitters; when you water her, she flourishes; when you water her, she blossoms; when you water her, she smells nice; when you water her, you see butterflies and not ants. Some of them repel all these bad insects even mosquitoes. On the top of every woman is nectar. When you pick the nectar, it’s always sweet. There is no bitter flower, it’s always sweet. That’s a woman for you. I believe everybody can have a good home if we can all be learned and work on our characters, because there is no bad marriage; we only have bad attitudes and bad characters. If we change the bad attitude and bad character, we have a good marriage. Anybody can be a good husband, anybody can be a good wife. These are the things I base my life upon. We pursue making sure that every marriage comes out better. That is why I’m not running any church. I’m a pastor, I sit here Monday to Sunday counselling people, training people, and helping people. We don’t charge for our counselling works. We sow it as a seed into the lives of people. If you get here at times you see many couples, and we engage them on marriage clinic. At times you see couples come here fighting. There were instances when some couples came here from different houses, separated for years, even right there in the reception almost fighting themselves, but before left hugging. There is a way God is helping us to use the combination of scientific and spiritual knowledge. Some few weeks ago, some couple came who have been keeping malice for five years under the same roof, but when they left, it was as if they were just getting married. That is what my life is all about.
As the founder of Familylifer.com what prompted the idea?
Yes! Familylifer.com is an idea that came up when we thought of how to help the family? How can we help women? Some women are being beaten. Is there anywhere they can post their troubles anonymously and they will get results? Being a counsellor on that website too, people will come up with different suggestion, do this do that. But when we have the phone number and email of the person we can easily reach out to the person. That is one! It’s about family empowerment and women empowerment. Women are what I call ‘endangered species.’ When a girl child is growing, people look down on her. In fact, when she is born they will say “she gave birth to a girl again” but a boy is being celebrated. Even some mothers when they get this news will be disturbed and the mother can even say “girl again!” But I will tell you this, have you seen area girls? You only see area boys. There are lots of bad boys. If you see any bad girl, they are girls that boys have afflicted. If you see an armed robber that is a woman, check it, men trained her. It has been a man! There can’t do anything, but when you know that: “I know my wife won’t be able to cook, she will get tired, so let me get something to cook.” That is intimacy. “I know your strength and weakness, but I am not using your weakness as a rod to you.” I know your weakness is: “Your left hand is weaker then the right hand is stronger. So, you will hold my weaker hand”, that is what I call marriage. I know your weakness but I won’t use it to judge you. You may see the husband saying the wife talks too much not knowing that God gave her to him, so that both of them won’t be talking at the same time. Women are so socialising. Both parties can socialise together. You just need to know the strength of one another. That is why I leave my wife to organise parties. She was the one who organised the recent event we had. She can organise anything call party perfectly. She is an organiser, so I allow her to operate when it comes to organising. If we understand this one thing, we understand that marriage can work better. That is why I advise you get married to someone that has a sense of belonging; not given to insulting one another; looking for one who is superior than the other. You marry a lady so that she can organise your life.
Having written series of books on youth and parenting, what has been the responses towards these books?
Africans generally don’t read, but we have a lot of people who bought our books. Some one just left now who spoke of reading our books. I have e-books that people can equally read.
Can Muslims enjoy this Familylifers platform and also come to benefit from your teaching?
When such people come here, we also teach them the same thing. Some will even request for prayers before we start. We give them the Bible portion to read and study. For the teachings, by doing this, you sit and pray together. There are times when we tell them to hug each other. Many marriages are hot but then when they come here, we coach them and they will be happy at last; the woman becomes the man’s mistress, they play with each other just like the way you woo each other in the first place was a case of a woman who slept around. Her husband hasn’t slept with her for many years, then she got a boyfriend to sleep with her. They caught her and it was something else. I am not saying that one is good. There was equally another case of a woman who after making every efforts, by the time she caught the husband and reported him to the family, they lambasted her saying, “you were not giving our son enough sex, it was you that sent our son out.” Then, everything was out on her, she was defenseless. There is usually the allegation when a man dies, that it’s the wife that killed him, and when a woman dies, she’s an Ogbanje (witch). So, we are coming as a voice with a platform for a lot of women and widows to post their troubles. We would have some activists within Lagos to come around. We will make sure that voiceless voices are forcefull; that is one of the reasons.
The second reason is the empowerment of the youth. We want them to start little things; we want them to reach out on a platform to showcase themselves, advertise themselves and what they do. Before you can advertise on Facebook, you will spend a lot of money which may not yield result. This is because facebook will limit you to about five to six percentage of what you want to do because they will want you to pay. In Nigeria, you may start a business with some money and nobody invest in it. So, the platform is there to showcase and there is a market place where you can showcase your products on whatever you are doing. At the same time, if you are looking for job, there is a place where you post your curriculum vitae (CV) so that people see your CV and they can connect and do a lot of things. Basically, it is a social media where you can follow your friends. So, if you have 10,000 followers following you, when you post they can see it compared to Facebook where only four percent can see. Thus, anytime you post, less than 400 people will see it. Where will the youth have money to do all these things? So, we want to empower the youth, help women and men, and also help the family as a whole. We want to build the family because if the family is not alright, the nation is in trouble. So, if the family is not settled the nation cannot be settled as a whole because from the family exude what is called ‘Nation.’
What challenges do you have combining the youth and family ministries together?
When we are talking about the youth, the youth are full of energy and they are full of exuberance because they want to explore. If you say this is a fire, they want to know if truly it’s a fire or flower. They want to test but one beautiful thing about the youth is they can be easily influenced if you get the right persons around them. One problem from adults is disconnecting from the youth. When you allow youth to mentor youth, it is like the blind leading the blind, so they begin to explore evil together. I was talking with some youth sometimes ago how I did my WAEC in 1990 and I failed. What made me fail wasn’t that WAEC failed me. I knew it wasn’t the lack of teachers; it was youthful exuberance. In my set we all failed woefully. When I sat down, I looked at my life. I was one of the best students and I was among the only few that had three credits; the rest of my colleagues had F9 parallel. While they kept saying their papers were spoilt, deep down I knew they didn’t spoil our papers. I knew they did not fail us, I knew we were not serious. I knew we were not reading. We were all waiting for cheats. In the village then, I think we were relying on the likes of spiritual power. We even brought a prophet few days to the exam inside the school. We submitted pens to him. He was a tall and huge prophet; “Elijaborah” by name. He came around and stupidly we all followed him. He made arrangement for water, placed it down and then ignited fire with matches. When the water started burning, that was enough to convince us and we started hailing him shouting “power,” “power.” We didn’t know that he only used a mixed substance. So, when we saw that, we were shouting and we paid him, while he prayed for us. We went to bed only for us to come to the exam hall with full boldness and the result was a very beautiful failure. It was that bad, that there was nobody in that set that could use that result to gain admission into the university. Just after I saw my results, I sat myself down and spoke to myself that I needed a new life. One can’t stay in such village with all the riff raffs and get an appreciable result. I left that location and I came to Lagos, rented an apartment in an interior village in badagry and I stayed there alone for a whole one year. I was reading day and night. I was between 19 and 20 years old. I took it upon my self that I will surely make it. Since you cannot be admitted back into secondary school then, I registered myself in for lessons. By 12:00 midnight I will wake up to read. I read and read over and over again. There was neither boy friends nor girfriends; no friends at all, no social life for one year. I think I sold that one year into my life. I believe it was God who instructed me that year because no adult did. Nobody called me to say like ‘boy you are going in the wrong direction’. So, that is why I took it upon myself that everywhere I see opportunity for youth, I will project them. There is something we call FOE which means Your Future, Your Old Age, Your Eternity. What I do for youth is that I use to project their 30 years plan and 30 years is a long time. Just look at your life 30 years back; look at what you have achieved; and going to achieve. Within the 30 years, you went to primary school, secondary school, university and eventually got married. So, the next 30 years is a long time. However, suddenly 2051 will be here. Yesterday, it was 1991 when I took the decision. From 1991 till now, you can see the number of books I have written. Peradventure I didn’t take the decision in 1991, then you people won’t be here today and I won’t be news worthy. I am news worthy today and can be interviewed. Now, the next 30 years, what are you going to do with it? March 2051 is very close and knocking at the door. It is not far; before you know it, it is 2051. When you add 30 years to your age, you will know that you need to think responsibly. So, if you are 40, you will be 70, if you are 30, you will be 60 which means retirement. If you are 20, you will be 50, that means menopause. If you are 50, you will be 80. If you are born today, you will be 30 years. So, 30 years is a long time. A lady that was born 30 years ago must have gotten married. That is why working with the youth is so interesting. I understand that. I was a youth pastor for about 10 years. I really understand the youth very well. I know when they are falling into the pit.
I wrote more than 10 books on youth, young people and families and I don’t want any challenge for them. They are beautiful people and full of energy. All we just do is to direct the energy to the right places and for the best concerning the family. The issues on family is a product of lack of knowledge. People are partially ignorant when we get to the issue of marriage. You see people spending about N20 million on wedding and didn’t spend N1,000 on marriage. One young lady wanted to get married and she kept on saying we are ready; we are preparing a white horse that will bring me to the Church; I am going to Bahamas for my honey moon. She was talking to her pastor, so he said: “Wow! That is good, I love this plan, your wedding gown is coming from Italy; you are going to Dubai after the wedding”. But the pastor asked, “Jane, let me ask you a question because I know you don’t know how to cook.” Then she said: “The last time you spoke to me that I should go and learn cooking, now I can cook”. The pastor said: “Now what can you cook?” Then she replied: “Noodles and egg. The pastor said: “So, your husband will be eating noodles and egg morning and night?” He then said: “You aren’t ready for marriage, you are just ready for wedding.” He said noodles does not last when you put it into plate and it was like a prophecy, the wedding didn’t last. Not knowing how to cook is not a problem but there are a lot of things attached to it. Maybe it can happen in other countries but not in this Africa; it can’t work. It has been the major problem people are not learning. People are not reading marriages can’t work by intuitions. So, this is the major problem that we aren’t looking at. We can see celebrities going online, fighting one and another. You will see foolishness. If we have good adults who will mentor the youth, they will do very well. However, if they fall into the wrong people, they can destroy the same energy. It has been like that.
Going through your profile, you don’t pastor a church, but you have attached spirituality to your ministry, how do you merge the two in resolving marriage issues of bringing people together?
The good thing is that we base our training on scientific and spritual approaches. All our standard is spiritual standard; in that while we don’t support divorce, we try to prevent it. I tell people that there is no marriage beyond redemption, if you (the man) can corporate and the wife can corporate. Many atimes when couples come here, I have never seen a family that corporates that won’t work. Even the case where the wife committed adultery, the one who gave birth and the child is not for the husband, when they come here, they pray together and the case is resolved. The number one problem about marriage is familiarity. People easily get familiar. You can use intimacy has a synonym of familiarity, but in the real sense of marriage it is different. There is a thin line between intimacy and familiarity. Familiarity is that I know you enough that your weakness heritates me. Intimacy is: ‘I know your strength and weaknesses; I celebrate your strength, so that I can lean onto you.’ Both familiarity and intimacy are about knowing. ‘I know that you will disorganise the room but I know that you will manage the money very well, that is why I know why God brought you to my life. So, as you are counting the money, the more I organise the room despite the fact that I am the husband’ (illustration). Familiarity means when we talk about being lazy, she can’t do anything, but when you know that: ‘I know my wife won’t be able to cook, she will get tired, so let me get something to cook.’ That is intimacy. ‘I know your strength and weakness, but I am not using your weakness as a rod to you.’ I know your weakness is: ‘Your left hand is weaker then the right hand is stronger. So, you will hold my weaker hand,’ that is what I call marriage. I know your weakness but I won’t use it to judge you. You may see the husband saying the wife talks too much not knowing that God gave her to him, so that both of them won’t be talking at the same time. Women are so socialising. Both parties can socialise together. You just need to know the strength of one another. That is why I leave my wife to organise parties. She was the one who organised the recent event we had. She can organise anything call party perfectly. She is an organiser, so I allow her to operate when it comes to organising. If we understand this one thing, we understand that marriage can work better. That is why I advise you get married to someone that has a sense of belonging; not given to insulting one another; looking for one who is superior than the other. You marry a lady so that she can organise your life.
Having written series of books on youth and parenting, what has been the responses towards these books?
Africans generally don’t read, but we have a lot of people who bought our books. Someone just left now who spoke of reading our books. I have e-books that people can equally read.
Can Muslims enjoy this Familylifers platform and also come to benefit from your teaching?
When such people come here, we also teach them the same thing. Some will even request for prayers before we start. We give them the Bible portion to read and study. For the teachings, by doing this, you sit and pray together. There are times when we tell them to hug each other. Many marriages are hot but then when they come here, we coach them and they will be happy at last; the woman becomes the man’s mistress, they play with each other just like the way you woo each other in the first place.
