By Prince Okafor

The Senior Pastor and President of David’s Christian Center (DCC) Lagos, Pastor Kingsley Okonkwo, has been conferred with honorary doctorate degree by Myles Leadership University, an India based institution.

The award conferment ceremony which took place in Lagos, was in honour of his notable contribution in the areas of Youth Development, Spiritual Leadership, Mentorship, Leadership, and philanthropy.

Okonkwo, who is also a renowned relationship expert and marriage counselor, was conferred with a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) in Transformational Leadership (Honoris Causa).

Speaking on the sideline of the conferment, he noted that, he is very encouraged by the award from the institution.

In his words: “You know, a lot of times when we work, we do not know if anybody is noticing. We don’t know sometimes if we are making an impact.

“But for me, this conferment reminds me again that people are watching and are being touched and it is an encouragement to do more.”

On the challenges of leadership in Nigeria, Okonkwo stated that, “The problem has gone beyond just leadership failure because it’s the people that produced the leaders.

“Every leaders was once just among the people. So I think we need to work through the families as my area is and help people become better human beings.

“Love their neighbours as the Bible teaches and be considerate of others because it is the people that become leaders. If people get it right will not even be able to have bad leaders because if the people good, they will bring good leaders.

“So we should just be more caring, more considerate of our neighbors and let’s start to work for a better Nigeria from the populace that is more in number than the leaders.

Earlier, in his address, the institute Director of Programme, Dr. Mathew Mario, said: “We aim to provide our students with the diverse global faculty through our relationship with a global network of universities.

“Our intention is to bring global perspectives and standards to the education that our students see. Myles Leadership University is disrupting the system, changing tertiary learning in the world with activity based experiential learning at our various teaching faculty complemented by new leadership capacity building programs with an ethos of ethics innovation and entrepreneurship.

“Today we are celebrating great men and women who have committed their life to making the world a better place.

“For us at Myles Leadership University, we recognize the value of good work and we celebrate their tenacity, sacrifice and inventions, and we believe strongly that it is in celebrating them, that we are inspiring them to do more and encourage our students and other young people that there is dignity in labour and value in doing the right things.”