Bisi Adewale who runs Family Booster Ministry has launched an interactive website to teach Christian values and promote healthy family life.
In this interview with TEMITOPE OJO, he bares his mind on how family failure has affected the society negatively and what the church and the government can do to redeem marriages and help guarantee a better life for future generations.
About the website
Family Parliament at www.familyparliament.com is a new site that has come on board to help the family. It provides information, helps people interact and proffers solution to their problems.
It is a site where family members can post their problems and both experts and people that have gone through similar issues can help proffer solutions. It helps them weigh their options and make the right decision.
It is an interactive forum or platform for people to air their views and post pictures, especially things that affect the family.
Examples are issues on health, education, parenting, wifehood, motherhood, widowhood, single-parenting, youth and teenage matters.
It is about general things that affect the family directly or indirectly. That is why it is called a parliament. It is a gathering of people, and posts are made by people who also can talk about their issues.
What do you want to achieve?
First, to give people the avenue to share their problems so they will stop dying in silence. It is said that ‘a problem shared is a problem half solved’.
Take a woman whose husband is beating her and warns that if she tells anybody he’ll kill her. She can post on the site and ask for help. She will get advice on what to do.
The Lagos State government has a programme called “The Public Defender”. Through this medium she can reach out and tell them her problems and see a counsellor. Such a woman will no longer suffer in silence.
Number two, the site is created for people to be entertained righteously because regularly on the site, new content comes in. We post nothing less than 400 plus comments daily and there are a whole lot of things to train and groom you about family, and even news that affects the family.
In addition, there is news on empowerment, education of children (toddlers, pre-schoollers, teenagers, et al), healthy living, et cetera. An average parent can just log on to the site during leisure periods and find out more about family issues.
There are food recipes, good food for healthy living, food for specific reasons, effects of unhealthy living; information on things like kidney diseases, lung cancer, and their causes, and how to prevent them. All these are on the site.
Those qualified to post or make comments
Everybody is qualified to comment but not everyone is qualified to be on the front page. The site is divided into sections and there are moderators who check what is posted.
How do you ensure those seeking counsel do not get wrong advice?
We have people called extra posters. These are real counsellors and they have the power to delete/remove unwanted comments.
Everybody posting must have been registered as a member and there are 21 rules governing any post.
People are informed that the site is for everyone but it is based on traditional Christian rules; so anything contrary to this won’t be accepted. Things like gay marriage and polygamy are not accepted.
Moderators take care of unwanted comments and members can report ill comments.
Criteria for membership
Anyone aspiring to be a member must be 15 years old or above. Teenagers are not welcomed.
The person must abide by the rules and regulations of the site and must join the site as a member because there are guests on the site, people that can just go through the site and read without commenting.
Then there are members who register with their names, emails, phone numbers, et cetera (although this information is not publicised). The only thing visible is the user name of the member. Moderators are members too but they have been proven.
There are those in the admin who work day and night because they are senior moderators.
Then there are extra posters, members who are professionals such as medical doctors, marriage counsellors, et cetera.
There are more than seven doctors and several counsellors on the ground ready to help.
Any monetary requirement for membership or participation?
There is no monetary attachment. It is free for everybody. The only thing we ask of our members is to post the right thing; no nude pictures, no profane thing, no support of immorality, adultery or fornication, homosexuality, lesbianism or anything that is contrary to the will of God.
At the moment, there is no other platform like this in Africa.
There is a teenage section where teenagers can also learn. There are men’s section, women’s section, parenting section, something for the youth and teenagers.
There is also something about empowerment, which has to do with vision and finance for the family because things may not go on smoothly when there is no money in the family.
We introduced empowerment where people can discover their purpose, their vision, how to make money and manage it well because money is very important in marriage.
Family Parliament is a forum for the entire family to make it better.
For how long has this site been running?
We started in May 2015 and we are still building it.
Can churches use it?
Yes, they can use the site to advertise their programmes, especially if their programmes add value to the family. Even schools can advertise family programmes.
As long as it affects the family, it is welcomed on the site.
Choosing counsellors, experts
We choose randomly and sometimes we write to them to join us. Some of them saw the site and joined. They give counsel, they also advertise their own websites or businesses.
Anything they post, they put a link beneath it so when people read it, they click on that link and it takes them to these experts’ sites. It is a way of publicising their individual sites.
That is why we have a lot of people interacting on familyparliament.com. We can’t even finish computing our total number. We deliberately send mails to some people to come and serve as counsellors.
Expected impact on average Nigerian family
Obviously, it will make great impact. I am a family minister; so what I do daily is to post three of my personal articles on the site. These are things that nobody could have got anywhere else.
There is a section for me called ‘The University of Marriage’. I post three or four times every day so that people can go there and get information.
Also, I am on board several times to answer questions to make sure that we bless souls and families.
In fact, I always dream of a time when we will put the divorce bill out of business because if people have someone to talk to, they won’t go to the law courts to end their marriages because of frustration.
We tell people there is hope even when they feel there is no hope.
Very soon we will start our marriage clinic where people will gather and relate their marital issues once a week and we minister to them, counsel them, and teach them physically.
We are hopeful that people will come from wherever they are. In the long run, we are thinking of a weekend marriage clinic whereby when you are having a problem and you post it on the site, we send you an email inviting you over.
We will bring couples together for about two or three days to share and pray, and we are very sure they will not go home the same.
Someone asked how we will be able to sustain the website financially. After a month or two we will open space for advertisement.
It is not there yet since we just started but when we kick start advert placement, we believe we can maintain the site with the proceeds. At the moment, we pay heavily to maintain the site.
How do you identify and block people with fake profiles?
We verify your email before you join us, together with your phone number or website. Then, when you begin to post, we begin to watch you.
That is why it is not everybody that can post on the front page; the worst you can do is post on other sections; and 90 per cent of our viewers are on the front page.
Wherever there is a new post, only the admin and moderators can bring it to the front page. That means we will first read the post and determine whether it is fit to be on the front page or not.
Why there are so many broken homes and marriages
The government has no definite agenda for the family.
Boko Haram is seen as a religious issue but in our ministry we see it as family failure. In the North, people willingly give their children out as willing tools in the hands of miscreants.
You can’t train a child well and then give him N500 with a bomb and tell him to go and die. He will not do it. Many of them don’t have reasons to live; that is why they have reasons to die.
For you that have a future and prospect to look forward to, you won’t take even N1 million to go on a suicide mission. So, the insurgency we see today is as a result of parental failure.
Anytime you see an armed robber, 90 per cent of the time it is a result of parental failure. When you see girls that are prostitutes, the truth is that they wouldn’t have turned out that way if they had a proper upbringing.
That is why we are advocating that there should be family-life subjects and courses in our schools. From primary to university level, there should be teachings on parenting at higher institution level.
Today, we have many wild parents raising children who are dangerous and wild. Many parents are unprofessional; they know child bearing, they know child rearing but they don’t know child training.
There is a school where we teach all these things and we have about 78 courses in all. We run a post graduate diploma course.
How many people are teaching about family life today? How many NGOs (non governmental organisations) are counselling free of charge?
People come here for free counselling and training. We don’t collect money from them.
Do you also run the school for free?
Well, that one is just coming up because people are not yet aware of it. Even those who are aware don’t believe it.
There is this saying that there is no school for marriage. So, in a situation where you have to beg people to attend school, you can’t even fix the tuition very high even though we have to pay the lecturers.
Do you have a structured programme for students?
Yes, it takes a couple of weeks to move from one stage to another. We have certificates for both certificate and advanced level courses. Altogether, we have about 78 courses.
Is the programme for everyone?
It is for everybody. The only one that is for certified counsellors is the postgraduate diploma course. Anyone who wants to pursue that must have passed the certificate and advanced level courses.
The postgraduate course majors counselling techniques and how to counsel different groups of people in different situations.
How the church can help redeem families
The church should rise up to its responsibility. If we want our marriages to succeed, then every pastor should be a trained counsellor.
Whether you are trained to be a marriage counsellor or not, once you are a pastor, you automatically have to counsel on marriage and family life. So, my advice is that every pastor should be a marriage counsellor.
In every seminary and Bible college, they should groom pastors to become certified marriage counsellors.
Then, every church should have a time to talk about marriage; as we have some churches in Nigeria that dedicate a whole month every year to talk about family life issues (while some churches do not bother about them at all).
If you check such churches, the level of divorce among the members is very low. Some churches even have what is called “Family Week” once every month. That means they attend to the family 12 weeks a year.
That is a very healthy arrangement to secure and preserve the families represented in the church.
Also, they should have a very good premarital counselling unit in the church as well as a very solid marriage committee. That will help the youths in the church.
A word for the government
The government should encourage parents by having structured training for students because those people will eventually grow up to become parents. With this training, they will be empowered and well prepared to face the rigours of family life.
Not only that; the government should work on the transport system, especially in our major cities. When a wife closes from work at 5pm but can’t get home until 11pm that brings a strain upon her family life.
We should try to help them.
Then, the issue of salaries that are not being paid is a major concern. It is we that are in family ministry that feel it most. It has broken so many marriages.
So, salaries should be paid when due.
Let’s know more about you
My name is Bisi Adewale. I am a family minister and marriage counsellor, by the grace of God. I am an author of so many books on family life. Ten of them are on parenting; others are for singles and married couples.
I run Family Booster Ministry. It started on September 9, 1995. It is a calling from God.
I studied accounting at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife.
When I was in my final year, I got the call from God to balance, repair, and renew all dilapidated families; to bring His sons and daughters together in holy matrimony and to raise a holy people for the end time revival.
That is why I didn’t start any church. In fact, I am too busy to pastor a church. We publish a magazine and in it we have a page called “College of Marital Success”. We have a blog www.totalfamilylife.com were I blog every day. The need for peoples’ response brought about the Family Parliament website.
We also shoot films on the family. Our first film is called “Two Nations”. Then, there is another one called “Three Ways”.
The two films are on parenting; for parents to watch and caution themselves on how to keep a healthy relationship with their children so that they won’t suffer in future. That is what we do at Family Boosters Ministry.
Is your wife involved in this?
My wife is totally involved in this. She is a marriage counsellor and family minister as well but not on full time basis like me.
She is a chartered accountant and has her own accounting firm. That makes her time flexible for us to travel for ministration together at any time or host programmes together.
