MFM Partners Lagos Govt. To Curb Unruly Behavior Among Teenagers, Youths

 

Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries in collaboration with the Lagos State Ministry of Education have come together to rescue teenagers and youths from unruly behavior.
Nigerian teenagers and youths are deeply enmeshed into unruly behavior that include internet fraud, drug abuse, abortion, cultism, masturbation, premarital sex, hence the need to sensitize them on the dangers of unruly behaviour
As part of his Seven Point Agenda to rescuing the youth from destruction and the way of evil, the General Overseer of MFM, Pastor (Dr.) Daniel Kolawole Olukoya has embarked and continued the sponsorship of sensitization programme whereby the young ones are sensitized and educated on the dangers of societal vices like cultism, drug abuse, premarital sex, among others.

This is the channel he uses to rebrand their life and rebrand their future, as he does not want them to go into destruction.

The event took place yesterday at Comprehensive Junior High School Gbagada, where MFM gathered over 1000 students across various secondary schools under the Education District 02 of Lagos State to sensitize them on the general theme: ‘Curbing Unruly Behaviour Among Teenagers and Youth.’

According to Evangelist Elizabeth Gbodi, the coordinator, representing the General Overseer of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, sponsors of the programme, said that the programme is part of the Corporate Social Responsibility of Dr Olukoya to the teenagers and the youths, adding that since the commencement of the programme in 2018, over 200,000 students have been reached.

“The children, even though they have Jesus and they are still practicing internet fraud, drug abuse, abortion, cultism, masturbation, premarital sex, all these unruly behavior, they are not still in a right relationship with their maker. So if they have all this information they can stop all these evil acts and have the right relationship with their maker. And you see all these children are going into these acts because they are not aware, they are not well informed, so they go into cultism and others because they feel it is part of life, they are listening to ungodly counsel, but if they have good counsel, counsellors to counsel them that this path you are threading, it will end in destruction, they will refrain from their ways and have a change of heart and start living well,” she stated.
Gbodi maintained that the young ones are a prey to the devil and there is urgent need to get them informed to be able to guard themselves against negative societal challenges. “We are here to sentsitise the community, because the young ones are prey in the hand of the devil, and the devil can make use of them at any time, and if the devil can catch them at this age their destiny will be destroyed, but from now if we can get them from the grass-root before they get to SS1,2,3, they are well informed, by the time they get to the university they will not be corrupt, they will not allow themselves to be lured into cultism, yahoo, etc. because they are already informed, they know the dangers, they know the risks and this programme has been saving a lot of souls.

“We started in 2018 and we were able to go round the public schools in Lagos State. We have six districts in Lagos State, we were able to go round, and this is phase two of the work. We keep receiving lots of testimonies, like the one we did at Ikorodu last month, there was a girl, after watching the abortion video, she said she thought abortion was okay, a way of life. She sent a chat to us, that she had hanger abortion, I am just hearing it for the first time, and the thing affected her womb, she was having pain, and her parents were not even aware, but she was able to open up. There was a case of a girl that gave her father sleeping medicine in his food, and that resulted in the man dying, she didn’t tell her parent, but opened up to us. A lot of them opened up, telling us things, in secondary school they have cultism, one of them joined because another boy was toasting his own girlfriend and they stabbed the boy, we have those that hand over their fellow students to kidnappers, some sold their friends for rituals, by the time they get there, they have finished cutting their vital parts.

“So we are going about sensitizing the children, not minding the religion, this is not about church, what their parents cannot tell them, we want to tell them and by doing so we are redeeming their lives, redeeming their future. So it is a programme organized by Dr. Daniel Kolawole Olukoya Foundation. This is what he is doing to help the community at large, and to have a better tomorrow
Marvel Okosodo, one of the facilitators, a pastor with Mountain of Fire Miracles Ministries, Victoria Island, Lagos, spoke on self-esteem. He said self-esteem is the way you value yourself, he said reasons for low self-esteem include poverty, fear of failure, one’s looks, and people looking down on you. He stated that some people have low self-esteem because of what they face at home and parents quarrelling. He warned them on the following as signs of low self-esteem, they include satisfying others when in fact the very act is hurtful to you, procrastination, negative self-talk, and bullying, among other signs.
Okopsodo said to overcome low self-esteem, you must challenge that negative low self-esteem you have about yourself, surround yourself with positive people, and not people that talk you down, hurt or bully you. He encouraged them to say or do something when they are being molested in anyway, and that they should learn to say no, and maintain their stand. He also urged them to lean on God, adding that it doesn’t matter what people say about them, what matters is what God says concerning them.

He said “Low Self-esteem is the root cause of people getting into vice, because if you are confident about yourself, you will learn patience, you will learn virtues of integrity, you will not want to compromise, you will not want to please people with something bad, something that you know that it is bad. You see people that are caught by the police in one crime or the other, they would tell you that the devil made them do it. That means they actually knew it was bad, but they couldn’t stop themselves from doing it, and because of the way they see themselves. Many ladies that go into prostitution, if they value themselves would find alternative routes. Just like the story I shared about a poor boy whose poverty forced to find an alternative to school instead of following people into the life of crime, he found himself getting a scholarship, because he wanted to do good. So because he valued himself, he could not stoop low to do anything that will spoil his family name, and all that.”

He said the partnership with the Ministry of Education gave them the avenue to reach a cross section of the children, and youth. “The school system has been the only system that has been able to gather everybody, we can’t do it in the church because there are some people that will not come to a particular church, but the school cut across different divides of the society, the rich, the poor, the well to do, the enlightened, the unenlightened, across religious grounds, and you would agree with me that when there is crime in society it affects everybody irrespective of your religion, and if we cannot tell them this truth now, they would find themselves easily lured into these vices and so we partner with Lagos State and they saw the virtue and offered us the platform to talk to these young ones to encourage them to do the right thing at all time.
Mrs Adeniyi (Director) Guidance and Counseling, Education District 02, Maryland, speaking on the reason for the event said, “We want to try as much as possible to reduce the vices in the society, when you talk about child abuse, cultism, premarital sex, drug abuse, bullying, all these vices in the society are so much now and have become a hydra headed monster, and there is need for us to nip them in the bud, so that we can build total children for this great nation.”

On how predominant cases of rape, drug and other related vices are in Lagos schools she said, “We have them, you discover that when a certain facilitator was speaking, some of them were crying, because they discover this is what they are experiencing every day, do you want to talk about child abuse, sexual abuse, bullying in the street, in the house, these are experiences. In secondary schools premarital sex is rampant, to the extent that virginity is no longer sacrosanct. So there is a need for the society and the stakeholders to join hands and make sure we direct our children.”

On how the society can benefit from a forum such as the day’s event, she said,
“The children of today, by tomorrow will become adults, so this will guide them to make rightful decisions, they will be able to make use of it so that they will not allow their destiny to be wasted, and some of them will go home and still talk to others, mentor others because of what they heard today. So this will escalate, years to come, this will boom and I will not be surprised if you have in every corner of Lagos or Nigeria people talking about all these vices and preventing them from our society.

Evangelist Olaniyi Isaac, one of the facilitators made a symbolic and pictorial presentation of what is popularly known as D and C to teach and warn the children on the dangers of premarital sex and sexual immorality. This provoked some of the children to cry and shed tears profusely.
Godwin Victor, a JS3 student from Gbagada Comprehensive Junior High School expressed delight in the sensitization exercise. He said “I learnt we should not join cultism, we shouldn’t indulge in bad things, and we should not follow evil people.”
 

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