Presiding Bishop of Living Faith Church, Dr. David Oyedepo has declared that the greatest challenge he sees facing the black man today is not intellectual bankruptcy, but laziness and the inability to task his thinking faculty towards realising assets that will benefit his immediate environment.
He said: “Everywhere I go in Nigeria today, everybody continues to complain that things are not working; but who will start how things will work and when? That person is you and that time is now.
And post graduate education should serve as a platform for inciting our students into thinking solutions. Today, it is thinkers that rule the world and we should be development-oriented in things we do.”
Bishop Oyedepo who is also the Chancellor of Covenant University, challenged academicians to ‘stop being merely bookish and start grooming thinkers’.
Delivering the keynote address at the 54th meeting of the Committee of Deans of Post Graduate Schools in Nigerian Universities at CU premises, he said his experiences with those in the academia shows that many of them are simply so proud of having become authority in their chosen fields.
He noted that, that is not enough as they need to go a step further by indoctrinating in scholars the art of thinking out ideas which would address some of the challenges plaguing the black continent.
Oyedepo said global solution providers such as Albert Einsten, Isaac Newton, The Wright Brothers among others, once had a brainwave in their time which led to great revolutions in their fields.
He warned Nigerians to battle their challenges headlong if they want to see needed changes.
To make that difference, Oyedepo challenged the deans to start thinking out of the box, saying that is what would propel them to imbibe same culture into their students.
“Leadership is not being in the driver seat, but adding values. As a dean, you must start thinking what difference you are going to make in that position; what contributions in terms of innovations and feat. You have no business being in that position if you cannot make that difference that will be a reference point to your successors years after you have left.”
Oyedepo suggested the ‘read thinking’ concept which according to him, combines research alongside critical thinking of solutions. Man’s biological configuration remains the same regardless of colour or height, Oyedepo argued.
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