By SAM EYOBOKA

FOR three days begining Friday, an army of economic experts from across the globe will converge in Lagos for a Kingdom Principles in the Market Place Summit to look at three major areas: Leadership; Kingdom or Biblical Economics and God and the Government. So these are three areas that are crucial at least in the nation and around the world.

The team led by an accomplished accountant and founder of Institute for Innovation, Integration & Impact Inc in San Francisco, US, Brett Johnson in collaboration with Pastor-in-charge Redeemed Church of God, RCCG, Province 39, and Commissioner for Economic Planning & Budget, Ben Akabueze will seek to deploy godly principles to overcome the impact of current global meltdown on the Nigerian economy.

At an interactive session with a select journalists at the newly commissioned RCCG The King’s Court in Victoria Island, Lagos, Brett Johnson and handfull of the experts articulated reasons why they are partnering with local motivational speakers to examine the role of leadership in nation building from a biblical perspective.

Nation building

Johnson explained that the international marketplace economics and leadership conference will feature co-founder, Institute for Innovation, Integration and team impact Inc, Lyn Johnson, CEO, Open Minds Agency, India, Natchi Lazarus, IT & Renewable Energy Serial Entrepreneur, USA, Cliff Stewart, Director, Farm Diary Ltd., India, Giju George, Vice president, Wireless Economics Signals Research Droup, USA, Randolph Luening, and Senior Manager, Microsoft, USA, Elaine Tai.

Others include Consultant Nephrologist, Associate pastor of Foursquare Gospel Church in Nigeria, Dr. Okey Onuzo, Pastor-in-charge of RCCG Region 19, Femi Atoyebi, CEO, Sweet Sensation, Kehinde Kamson, CEO, Africsn Capital Alliance, Dr. Okey Enelemah, MD, Standard Chartered Bank, Bola Adesola, YouTube/Google Nigeria, Teju Ajani, Project Manager, Genetech USA, Ugo Umelo and Chief Operating Officer/Executive Director, Citibank, Funmi Ogunlesi.

They are determined to instill integrity in purpose and practice; convergence of work, family and church life; and Kingdom principles for doing business in the marketplace.

“There is a sort of economic crisis and it is really a failure of leadership. If you look at the United States for example, in the last economic recession, they lost 10 million jobs. That’s quite an accomplishment and nobody has been prosecuted; not one person has been called to account because of it. And this is a failure of leadership within the banking system and within government in the US for starters. I think on the other hand, you can see where leaders are doing a good job and even one person can begin to make a difference whether the person is in business or in the government,” Johnson stated.

“So we do think leadership is critical and that they need to be encouraged, strengthened, fortified, built-up and challenged where leadership is not really serving the greater needs of society,” Brett Johnson who had written several books on leadership averred, noting that he had done a lot of work over the last 30 years with the executives and the traditional leadership… “there are two types of leaders: the Entrepreneurs and the Managers, the rest are not leaders.

“And actually, I think that it is a strategy to undermine people and the rest are just nobody. Some people even say that managers are not leaders and that strategy is steal, kill and destroy because basically in our assessment, over 50 per cent of the people are entrepreneurs, are organizers and networkers,” he noted.

He explained that his team had been working with Lagos State, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Unity Bank as well as many companies around the world on this concept, explaining that it is different in a number of different respects; it’s fresh, pretty easy to understand.

Who are the targets of this leadership summit in Nigeria? He said: “We are targeting leaders in the market place and market place includes business people, government, includes people working in different professions such as education, law enforcement and so on. So we are targeting marketplace leaders and we are not specifically holding a summit that is geared towards church leaders but it will be beneficial to them because church is an organisation, they deal with serving people and so, the principle applies to them as well.”

According to him, the nation’s young one will not be left out. “We will be speaking specifically to youth and business activateship.

Principle of leadership

This is something geared towards high schoolers specifically, the principle of leadership that we will be covering will be relevant to young people as well particularly, college age and recent graduates who are looking at how they can integrate faith into the rest of their life? That’s one of the big topics we will be looking at with leadership: how do they integrate faith and the rest of their lives together—your career and your calling.”

Each of the topics will actually be a panel with multiple speakers.

“We won’t have long 45 minutes speeches, which is an hour and half in Nigeria as you know, we won’t do that. We are going to have short 15-minutes speeches followed by panels with questions and answers and break-ups. The break-ups will cover topics like how do I apply my faith in my work place? What about praying for my business? How do I deal with difficult economic times, what should my response be? How do I handle my faith at work when the economy is going down?”

The marketplaces are different in America, Europe, India, Nigeria and other parts of the world. How are you going to identify the challenges perculiar to the Nigerian economy?

And this is what Brett Johnson says: “We have two things. Firstly, we have already been speaking to people in the Nigerian marketplace for long time, asking them what they feel the challenges are; and we have a list of some of those already. Secondly, there will be Nigerians who will be participating as well; people you know and know the NIgerian situation.

Nigerian situation

“The third thing I will say though is actually, I disagree with you. We all might sound a little bit different but a business person in Lagos is not much different from a business person in China, London, New York, San Francisco, Cape Town or Jakarta.

“We’ve worked with 350 businesses over the last 11 years and they all use iPhones or Samsung and some of them even, Blackberry. They speak the same language, they dress pretty much the same and there is a global business culture and they have the same kind of challenges, the same kind of issues. Yes, there still might be a little bit of difference but the core culture and the challenges are actually the same because of globalization around the world,” Brett Johnson explained with Natchi Lazarus and Giju George nodding in agreement.

“I recognize some unique challenges; Nigeria has corruption and so does India, South Africa, Indonesia and the rest. When I first went to Indonesia, they gave me a shit explaining the difference between bribery, corruption, facilitation …I mean, it was like an art. So, challenges in government, sure, there are some different challenges here… in some part of Africa, tribalism is an issue, everywhere, poverty and unemployment is a huge giant all over Africa but poverty and unemployment is a huge problem in India as well.

So, we recognize that there are some unique challenges and there are some common challenges that we as working men and women can address. You know, we don’t believe that government create jobs for example, so the challenge is for people in the marketplace to rise up and to apply their faith in a work context to those companies that don’t just serve the CEOs and they pay but serve the people. God intended that business would be a vehicle of blessing to the society and not just for getting some people wealthy.

And so, we hope people discover the purpose of their career and the purpose of their business and I think that is common certainly in most undeveloped nations or some sections.