Alder Consulting, a creative intelligence outfit, has fingered societal pressure for the increased suicide rate by youths.At the official launch of Alder Church Report 2019 in Lagos, the principal, Mr. Leke Alder, called on governments at all levels to create policies that could stop Nigerian youths from committing suicide.
In his interaction with journalists, he identified unemployment and hopelessness as some of the reasons many Nigerians take their own lives.He added: “For the government, it is their work to set up policies that could ameliorate those problems that are making Nigerians to commit suicide.”
The firm, according to him, has tried to give people hope and let them know that suicide is not the best option, while encouraging them to believe in their innate ability to overcome societal pressure.Applauding the churches’ role in solving some of the problems, he regretted that the pulpit has communication problem.
His words: “The problem churches have is the issue of strategic communication. They have theological roadblock, in the sense that they believe that your right hand must not know what your left hand is doing. It is a misinterpretation of scriptures.
“But the backlash against the church shows that the society does not view the church the way the church views herself. The society believes that the church should communicate. So a lot of the backlash is based on the communication gap.“They (churches) are doing a lot because there is hardly any church that doesn’t have a youth, or outreach to area boys/prostitutes, prison inmates or empowering young people.”
The question is, do the people know? As far as these people are concerned, the churches are not doing anything.”One of the guest ministers, Pastor Godman Akinlabi, believes that Alder’s Church Report 2019 will encourage churches to do more than they had done in the past.
His words: “I consider Alder’s Church Report as a motivation. If truly we want to serve people, we need to get feedback from them because feedback is very important. Even Jesus asked, ‘who do men say that I am?’ So, for the church in Nigeria, it’s okay to ask, ‘who do men say we are?’ We shouldn’t say we don’t care about what the people say about us.
“If truly we are sent to lead and to influence these people, then we should be willing to understand what their perception is because there’s a difference between real needs and felt needs.”
GUARDIAN
