36th International Ministers & Leadership Conference Themed: Take Your Portion

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SPEECH DELIVERED BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, IMMEDIATE PAST VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT THE 36TH EDITION OF THE INTERNATIONAL MINISTERS/LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE THEMED: TAKE YOUR PORTION ORGANISED BY THE MEN OF ISSACHAR VISION INC. IN IBADAN, ON THE 23RD OF JANUARY, 2026

PROTOCOLS

Thank you all very much for the very warm welcome. But let me begin by thanking our hosts, the Reverend Samson Ajetomobi and his wife, the Reverend Stella Ajetomobi, The Men of Issachar Vision, for the honour of the invitation to speak at this 36th International Ministers and Leaders Conference.

And the fascinating theme of the Conference is “Take Your Portion.” How many people are prepared to take their own portions today? Praise the Lord!

Well, I want to thank you, Sir and Ma, for leading by example, because you have taken your own portion by hosting this Conference and giving us all the opportunity to learn from each other about how to take our own portion in different respects and to speak on the topic, “Take Your Portion in Nation Building.

But I want to take a few minutes to talk about an aspect of nation-building, which is why Christians should participate in politics and governance. Why should Christians participate in politics and governance? There’s only one group of people that the Bible says God will hold accountable for the destinies of their nation. It is not businessmen. It’s not even politicians. It is Christians. Those who are called by His name are the purveyors of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So God said in 2 Chronicles 7 verse 14, “if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sins and heal their land.” It is what His people do or do not do that will determine His intervention. It is what the people of God do, or do not do, that will determine the intervention of the almighty God.

So those who are called by His name have a clear mandate also. We have a command to transform our nations. In Matthew 28 verse 18 to 20, especially verse 19, the scripture says, “go and make disciples of all nations.”

And this is not just about converting individuals,  it’s about discipling nations. And that means bringing every area of national life, whether it is politics or business or education or media, under the influence of the gospel.

It means teaching, guiding, and living out the principles that shape societies. And Jesus also said in Matthew 5 verse 13 to 15, “you and I are the salt of the earth.” He says, “we are the light of the world.”

Salt preserves and flavours. We are also, as the scripture says, the light of this world, the light of our nation, the light of our country. Light gives direction. Light is the only way of conquering darkness. It’s the only way of exposing darkness. Matthew 5 verse 14 to 16 says that “you are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.” He says that, “now, do they light a lamp, and put it under a basket? Well, they put it on a lamp stand, and it gives light to all who are in the house, to everybody”. And it doesn’t matter whether those people are believers or not believers.

If you put on a light, everybody benefits. Christians benefit. Muslims benefit. Even those who say they don’t believe in God will benefit once you put on the light. Let your light, according to scripture, so shine amongst men that they may see your good works. See what you are doing as a Christian, and glorify your Father in heaven.

We are meant to influence society in every sphere, not just in church, but in governance, in law, in business, in culture. Our light is to shine for the benefit of everyone, not just other Christians. Why is it this group of people, why is it just Christians that God has given this responsibility? Why has God given Christians, in particular, the responsibility to transform nations and to change nations? Why? It is because we are the people who carry the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most transformative message ever given to man.

The gospel of Jesus Christ, I want to repeat it, is the most transformative message that has ever been given to man. I’m not saying this purely from a spiritual perspective. I’m saying it from the perspective of what has been shown and demonstrated all over the world.

This gospel of Jesus Christ has been responsible for transforming nations and peoples. It is the most powerful force on earth. As scripture says in Romans 1 verse 16, “it is the power of God itself to salvation for everyone who believes.”

It is this gospel that transformed Europe, transformed America, and it so dramatically transformed those continents and nations that Asian civilisations, such as Japan, were so amazed at how these formerly barbarian nations, don’t forget that civilisations like China and Japan had existed 5,000 years before the European and American civilisation. America is only 250 years old. China had been in existence for 5,000 years.

They had a civil service long before America was even born, long before America was even conceived. They already had a civil service. They already had civil servants. They had libraries before the concept of America ever emerged. But because of the transformative power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, America and Europe outstripped all of these countries in Asia very, very quickly. Europeans would only in a few years, only in a few years, that outstripped all these advanced civilisations.

And Japan sent some of its best minds in 1871, sent some of their best minds to Europe and America. It’s a programme where they call the Iwakura Mission to go and find out what it was that made such a difference in Europe and America. They actually sent almost 2,000 men and women, their best minds to enquire.

And I want you to find out, to read about this, those of us who are interested in finding out why historically the gospel of Jesus Christ has transformed nations and how it has done so. The mission is called the Iwakura mission, spelt just as I pronounce it, Iwakura mission. Those are the Japanese trying to find out what exactly happened.

By the 15th and 16th centuries, the politics, the governance, the institutions of government, education, and commerce in Europe and later America were dramatically transformed. How? By Christian values, Christian values of integrity, hard work, education, care for the poor, and justice. And these were propagated and practised by the different strains of the Protestant movement, especially the Puritans.

These were just born-again Christians like you and me. But they were so convinced and persuaded about the gospel that in their preaching and practise of it, they transformed their countries. Jesus made it clear in giving us the mandate to disciple the nations that you and I carry this same incredible power of transformation. And it’s not meant for our private use. It’s not meant to make us rich. It is meant for us to change our societies.

Today, sometimes you wonder, because you only need to look at our prayer points to know what we think the gospel is all about. The Bible says in Proverbs 29, verse 2, “that when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice. But when the wicked rule, the people groan.”

So what is the point of the scripture? If the righteous are too righteous to be in politics. What is the point? If the righteous amongst us feel that we are too righteous, we don’t like that thing called politics, we are so righteous that we don’t even want to get close to it. What is the point of the scripture then? When will the righteous then rule? Many of us, and I want to just explain some of the aspects of what I’m trying to say.

Many of us, in many ways, want to contribute to society, to make our society better. We have various burdens and want to make society better.

Some of us want to ensure that the poor are fed, and some of us want to ensure that other people are treated justly, that people are treated well by our police, by the courts. Even some of us want to see that the blind or the disabled are given better opportunities.

Others sit down and ask themselves, what is so difficult about providing housing for the poor in our country, or providing better schools? For many of us, we really don’t do anything about our burdens. I mean, we have a burden, we want to do something. We are convinced that something has to be done, but we don’t do anything about it. We just sit down. Some of us will pray that well; hopefully, one day things will change. But there are some of us who may take our burdens one step further.

We join an organisation or form an organisation, an NGO or something that can achieve some of these objectives. I’m sure there are some of us, like you and me, who belong to that second category.

I will give you three examples of burdens that I had for many, many years, and what I did about them, and then what happened. One of them was that I was so upset that police would arrest people in those days for wandering, and put them in cells, and they would be brought to court with no lawyers to defend them. Of course, I’m a trained lawyer. In other cases, people would be deprived of their land or properties, or be treated badly, because they could not afford a lawyer. So they suffered injustice without redress.

Now, this was a big burden for me as an individual, because I felt, how can people be treated so unjustly? How can people be treated so unfairly? So we formed an organisation, and working with others, we organised free legal services for the poor. But we were very few, very few of us, maybe in all, give or take, about 10 lawyers.

And in a period of about five years, we were able to represent about 200 people in Lagos State. But there were thousands of such cases, thousands, but we were only able to represent about 200 in almost a five-year period. That’s one burden.

The other burden was that I was so angry about corruption in our courts, and amongst judges and magistrates who are taking bribes. So we started an anti-corruption organisation called Integrity. We made reports on corruption, but we couldn’t change much. We complained, we wrote letters, we tried to push some cases forward, and all of that, but we couldn’t do much.

The third burden that I had is that I’ve always believed that we can do something about feeding the poor. Christians had a duty to provide for the poor. So in our church, I pastored in Lagos, the first church I pastored, we started school feeding programmes. I had a food kitchen. So we would try to give more food to the poor. We’ll go around, give as many people as we can, but we were very limited. How much money did we have? We could feed a couple of hundred, but there were so many hundreds of thousands of people who we couldn’t feed.

One thing I learned from these experiences I’ve shared with you is that in trying to do something about the burdens, one thing is that, yes, you can do your part. You can take a portion, but is that all that you can do? I discovered that in a country of 200 million people, or even a village of 500,000 people, you may do your best, but only the government has the capacity to do things at scale. You can do your best. You can do, for instance, in our case, we looked around and tried to help maybe 200 people who were in trouble with the police, who didn’t have legal representation, but that’s not scalable. There are hundreds of thousands of people who wanted to feed people. We had very little money, so we could only feed a couple of hundred, but I recognised that only the government has the resources to do things at scale.

The second thing I learned is that if you do something about your burden, if you do something, whatever it is, no matter how small, if you take some steps, God will give you opportunities to play on a bigger stage. If you do something, if you take some steps, it doesn’t have to be big, but if you react to your burden, God will give you an opportunity to be able to play on a bigger stage.

I have had these burdens for a long time, but in 1999, I had the opportunity to serve in government as Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice in Lagos State under the present President, who was then Governor in Lagos, President Bola Tinubu, who was then Governor Bola Tinubu.

One of the first things I did as Attorney General was to set up a Citizens’ Rights Department. And as part of that was something which we call the Office of the Public Defender. And guess what the Office of the Public Defender did? That office was able to hire several lawyers. As a matter of fact, at some point, we had almost 100 lawyers. And at some point, we doubled that number. We kept increasing the number of lawyers in the office.

What were they doing? All they were required to do was to provide services for people who could not afford to pay for lawyers. Whether it was a criminal case or a civil case, they provided the services. So, my burden, which I’ve had for many years, I could only do it on a small scale. But in government, I was able to do it on a huge scale. We set up Mediation Centres. Mediation Centres are just places where people can go and settle their cases. And in the mediation centre, no lawyers are there. It’s just a trained mediator. Magistrate courts were doing 8,000 cases of landlord and tenant.

In the Mediation Centres, they started from 2,000, and the Magistrates were doing 8,000. Very quickly, they moved up to 20,000 cases.

Today, there are about 18 or 19 Mediation Centres in Lagos doing thousands of settlements of cases. The interesting thing is that many states copied the Directorate of Citizens’ Rights.

Even the Federal Ministry of Justice established a Citizens’ Rights Department of its own. So, from a burden, if you do something, God will give you a bigger stage to play.

On the second burden, judicial corruption. As I said, I just kept wondering, why would judges be taking bribes? And we fought and fought and fought, but we achieved very little. But as soon as I became Attorney General, we started to take action. We conducted a survey among 200 lawyers who are practising law in Lagos State. That was the first thing we did. We said, let’s even find out from lawyers themselves, lawyers who practise in the courts, and let’s find out what they think about judges and corruption, about corruption generally in the judiciary? 89% of the 200 lawyers that we interviewed said that judges in Lagos were notoriously corrupt. Notoriously corrupt. So there was corrupt, very corrupt, notoriously corrupt.

89%, that was in 1999. So we sat around the table, and we had to ask ourselves, how do we rescue this administration of justice system from notorious corruption? How do we do it? Even at the time when we had done this survey, no judge or magistrate, from the day Lagos State was founded in 1967 to 1999, when we did the survey, had been reprimanded for corruption. I’m not saying punished, just warned, not one.

So everybody knew that there was so much corruption, but nobody had even been warned. Nobody had even been punished. So everybody’s file was clean. Everybody had a clean file. No problem at all.

So we then decided, what are we going to do about this? Our reformed focus on the appointment of judges will ensure that the process, the way that we appointed judges was merit-based.

We applied competency tests so that we could find out if they were competent. We also asked the Nigerian Bar Association to provide character references for each judge.

In 2001, we appointed 26 new judges who brought diverse backgrounds. They were all very young. Many of them were 35 years old when we appointed them, 34 years old when we appointed them. At the time in Lagos, judges will be almost 50 before they’re appointed.

But we decided we’ll appoint younger people, young people who had something to prove, who had relatively good records and good character.

Then we did something about remuneration. We changed the salaries. They were earning N67,000 a month. We quadrupled that. We moved it to N350,000 at the time, so that they were earning much better because we realised, as they themselves told us, that with N67,000, it was nothing.

When we met and sat around the table, we asked each other a question. “Oh, you are Justice X, Y, Z. You have a child in America,” he said, “yes, yes.” “How much do you pay? 12,000.” We’ll write it down, $12,000, okay. “You have one in secondary school, in university here. How much is it?” 5,000. As we were writing it down, one of them tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Learned Attorney General, you know that all these things we are doing are rubbish. You know it’s rubbish. You are pretending to pay us. We, too, are pretending to work. Everybody is pretending.” So we realised that we could not continue pretending. So we had to pay well, so that these people who can easily be tempted are paid decent salaries, so that their lives, at least, they’ll be able to live a decent life.

We also ensured that every judge, once you are appointed a judge in Lagos, you have a house of your own. The house is yours for life. And you choose where you want the house, either in Ikoyi, Lekki or Ikeja, GRA.

You choose where you want the house, and we’ll give you the house. So as soon as you become a judge, you are also the owner, you become a landlord. It is not an official residence; it is your residence, it’s yours. So that you don’t have to worry yourself that when I retire, am I going to have a place to go? So we did all of those things. And we ensured transportation, you know, we bought them cars, and every four years we changed the cars.

But then we established an independent process for investigating corruption, with the National Judicial Council taking charge, so as to avoid local interference.

In the first year of the reform, we sacked 22 magistrates for corrupt practises. Three judges of the high court were also sacked. Now, when that happened, we are paying well, we are appointing good people, we are sacking those who are messing up. Everybody sat up; everybody knew that this was serious business.

In 2007, the World Bank did a report, a follow-up on what we had done. They found, alongside others who did the report, in the same sort of survey that we did, 0% of lawyers perceived the judiciary as corrupt, from 89% to 0%.

And let me assure you that the reason was not that this report suddenly saw the light. There are practical things that we can do, there are practical things that can be done, to make sure that you check corruption.

How about my burden for helping the poor? That’s the third burden that I had.

In early 2014, the APC had just been formed, and three of us, myself, Professor Pat  Utomi, and Mr Wale Edun, who is currently the Minister for Finance, were asked to write the manifesto of the APC. In writing that manifesto, one big burden I had was, how do you ensure that we can feed the poor? How do you ensure that we can do things for the poor? I had no idea at the time that I would be the vice presidential candidate of our party. But this assignment gave us an opportunity to design one of the largest social investment schemes in Africa.

And my own inspiration came from Matthew 25, verses 37 to 40. By the way, that scripture is the basis for all welfare schemes that you have seen, especially in the Western nations of the world. It is that scripture that’s the basis for those welfare schemes. It says, and this is Jesus who gave this example, who told this story. He said, “then the righteous will answer him, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you? When did we see you thirsty and give you a drink? When did we see you a stranger and take you in, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and come to your help? And he will say to them, as shortly as I say to you, inasmuch as you did it for one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me.”

We realised just based on that scripture, that we had to have programmes big enough to do as much as possible for those who could not afford it. We had the Homegrown School Feeding Programme, Conditional Cash Transfers Programme, Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme and all that, and something called theN-Power.

By the next year, I was nominated Vice Presidential Candidate, and I had become Vice President by 2015. At their peak, we who were feeding 100 children in our church, were feeding 9.6 million children every day in 30 States of the Federation. There were farmers, cooks and this was only in public primary schools.  We were hiring over 500,000 graduates, and providing microcredit to 2.4 million informal traders.

If we had remained outside partisan politics, even the very modest achievements that we were able to make would never have materialised. The Apostle James made a simple common sense point, he said that the needs of a poor society or poor people are not met by prayers but by works. This is James, who said this. He said the needs of poor people, the needs of people who need food, are not met by prayers; they are met by works. You have to do something about it.

James 2: 15 to 17,  “if a brother or sister is naked or destitute or in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, depart in peace and be warmed and filled, but you don’t do the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?” That’s why it says faith by itself is not much use without works, it is dead. So if we say housing for all, justice for all, free education for all, of these are crucial; they cannot be achieved by prayers alone. We have to take steps, we have to take action, even if we are not politicians; we who belong to the body of Christ must be able to say these are the basic minimum things that we think a society ought to have. We have to be able to fight for those things.

We can do CSR, good Samaritan Ministries in our churches, but only the government can scale up. Only the government can do the large numbers.

The next question is, and this is a question that I’m asked very frequently, how does a Christian, not just a public servant, how does a Christian uphold Christian values amidst systemic corruption? Literally speaking, how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? How does a Christian survive, a Christian businessman or christian politician survive? By living and acting righteously.

The truth is that it is extremely difficult and very costly, but scripture affirms that God is looking at us to change our environment, and we cannot allow our environment to change us. Unfortunately, what we find is that many have decided that, if we can’t beat them, let us join them. Romans 12 verse 2 says that,  “we must not be conformed to this world, but we must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, that we may prove what is good, acceptable and perfect will of God.

We can’t be conformed to the behaviour and standards of our own society, of the Nigerian society. We cannot be conformed to that, we cannot. We must find ways of ensuring that our minds are renewed, so that we can renew the minds of society. The prevailing behaviour in our country cannot be the standard that Christians like ourselves will observe. It is our duty to establish standards of righteousness that will build our nation.

Nations are built also by the reputation that their citizens give the nation, which is why the scripture says in Proverbs 14 verse 34, “righteousness exalts a nation.” Righteous behaviour will raise the reputation of a person, of a nation. The world is run on trust, whether you are a believer or a non-believer, whether you say there is God or no God, it is run on trust. If you cannot be trusted, you cannot make progress.

I always give the example of my days as a student in the United Kingdom in 1980. I had a delay in the payment of my school fees. In those days, there was a long process to process payments through the Central Bank of Nigeria. So, I went and spoke to my counsellor in a university.  I said,  “look, my school fees will not be ready in six weeks.” And I had to pay, exams were coming, all sorts of things were coming. The counsellor said, “why don’t you go to the bank and take a loan?” I said I don’t have money. She said, “go to the bank and explain, you have a bank account?” I said, “yes.” “So go to the bank and explain, and you get a loan.

I went to the bank and approached the counter. I spoke to a lady, and she confirmed I had an account there. She took out a ledger, looked at it, and saw that I had an account. I had, I think, only 20 pounds or 30 pounds left in that account, and I needed 600 pounds. She asked me, “how much do you need?”  I said, “600 pounds.” “Okay, when are you going to pay back?” I said, “well, I’m expecting my check maybe in two months. I thought it would come in six weeks, but maybe two months.” She said, “okay, that’s eight weeks.” She wrote everything down, and she handed me 600 pounds across the counter. That was in 1980, in a bank in London. I went and paid my fees, did everything I needed to do. Fortunately, the check came earlier than I thought, and we paid in the check. That was 1980.

A few years after that, in 1983 and 1984, most banks in the United Kingdom would not open an account for a Nigerian. If you had a green passport, they would not open an account for you. Why? Because many Nigerians had this sort of situation, I found myself. They had used credit cards to buy all sorts of things, and then they would run home. They would say these Oyinbo people are very foolish!  They just buy things with credit cards, and then they’ll dash and run away.

The fact that they acted dishonestly, the fact that they thought they could cheat and get away with it, cost everybody, not just themselves, everybody, every one of us. Even up to now, if you want to open a bank account abroad, it’s so difficult. Regularly, they’ll close the bank accounts of Nigerians. They have too many people trying to defraud, and all that.

In the past few years, many foreign banks have closed accounts of some Nigerians because of the numerous attempts to defraud those accounts. So, no matter how much you have in your account, they say we don’t want your business, because it’s just too much trouble. Business with people who cannot be trusted. So, because of the untrustworthiness of a few, a whole nation is painted black.

There are people today who say, after all, they are not happy, it’s not my own money that they are stealing, a whole nation is painted black.

Developing trust also means that we must repay when we borrow. Scripture says, “the wicked borrows and does not repay.” Psalm 37 verse 21 says, “the wicked borrows and does not repay.” How many people are here who have borrowed and have not repaid? I see some people looking down; they are not looking up at me anymore. Whether it’s a friend, a relation, or a bank, whichever, credit is the lifeblood of business. You are dead if your credit sources dry up, and if you prove that you will not respect your obligations, and not pay back, then nobody is going to trust you.

In most economies, as you know, the sale of goods is by credit. Years ago, many foreign businesses offered credit to Nigerian businesses. I remember a particular businessman who was importing and selling cars as a representative of a major car manufacturer. I remember him because I worked for that car manufacturing plant. When the man refused to pay, they would give him credit; 120 days’ credit, send cars to him, he would sell the cars, and not pay back. So, my own law firm was hired to try to recover money from him. He paid back a few times, but then he would not pay. He kept the money and lived large. Not too long after, the credit stopped, and the businesses collapsed. But around the same time, there was a businessman running a company called Elizade. He was doing the same business, buying cars on credit, but he kept paying back. The foreign partners found him reliable and trustworthy.

40 years later, he’s still in that same business, and now, he has an assembly plant, assembling those cars that he used to import and sell. He is the Chairman of the Nigerian subsidiary of the Japanese company, which he initially joined as a distributor. Trustworthiness built a business from nothing into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise.

Same as Cosmas Maduka, of course, many of us know Cosmas Maduka of Coscharis. Similar story, he just made sure that he was a person of integrity, that’s all.

One of the reasons why the economy is still finding it difficult, even where small businesses are being opened, is that many businesses today experience problems with dishonest staff.  I was speaking to some owners of small businesses about their business problems, and many of them had dishonest staff.

A lady who owned a card store, this lady was in my own church, she owned a card store, and they made cards there. She made high-quality invitation cards. One day, she was told by one of her customers that her cards were now being sold somewhere in Iponri, but she had a store in Victoria Island. They were selling her cars in Iponri. She said, “This same card.” The customer said, “yes and it’s much cheaper than the one you are selling.” She went there only to discover that two of the ladies who worked with her, two of the Christian graduates who worked with her, had been stealing her inventory and had opened their own card store in Iponri. That’s the story all over the place.

A lady who owned a cake shop complained that her staff would deliberately miscount the number of cakes that were brought in from the bakeries, and then sell the excess. So they will start counting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, and then they will look for the excess, and go and sell. She said the reason why she couldn’t open other cake shops is that she had to be physically present at her store. If she tried to open a branch, I mean, you can imagine, you are looking at them, face-to-face, and they are miscounting and stealing money. Can you imagine opening a branch? One of the reasons why people can’t open branches is because of trust.

But there is an opportunity here because so many Nigerians and foreigners must do business in Nigeria. The whole world wants to do business in this country, so the world is in search of Nigerians of integrity. The trustworthy Nigeria that you can do business with, everyone wants faithful partners; everybody is looking for those who can be trusted.

I want to say that if we could say amongst Christian young men and women, if we could say that in this place, we can find honest men and women, young men and women, you will not lack a job. There’s no way that you will lack a job; local jobs, international jobs. If people can verify, if they can say, in this particular place, in this particular church, we will find young men and women of integrity, there’ll be no shortage of opportunities or jobs, because everybody is looking for somebody to trust. Even thieves are looking for honest people to keep their money. Are you going to go and keep your money with the thief? You’ll be looking for an honest person to keep your money.

This is the gap that Christians must fill; it is a gap reserved for the Christian professional or business person. People must be able to say of you, he or she is a man or woman of their word. She can be relied upon to act honestly. To be trustworthy men and women who act with integrity, let your yes be yes, and your no be no. That’s what the scripture says.

We must be able to trust you to abide, to know that you will abide by your word. That’s the only way for us to transform our country.

When I became a Christian, I mean, it was for me a very transformative experience, and I was already at the time a Professor, but that’s another story. I had a law firm, and we’re doing a lot of bank and corporate work. I had a partnership; there were two other lawyers, so we’re three partners who founded the business.

Before we became Christians, we had so much work with banks; company secretaries, in many cases, they would give us work, but they always wanted a kickback. They always wanted us to pay them, so if they paid us fees, they wanted us to part with some of our fees. We happily give them, we’re very happy to give them until we got saved. All three of us became saved at different times.

When we got saved, we refused to give anybody any bribe or kickback, and once we refused, our practice crashed. We lost all our clients, except one, of all the banks were doing work, only one. We were left with only one, a Christian lady by the way. Of course, the others, many of them were Christians, but they insisted on a kickback or a bribe, and we lost everything for almost two years. We were living, as a practise, we were living from hand-to-mouth. We could hardly survive as a legal practice. Fortunately for me, I was teaching at the university, so at least I had a source of income, but things were very tough.

Three years later, God opened up international opportunities for us, and we were able to get back on our feet. We started working for two international banks, where we had many Nigerian banks. We started working for just two international banks, making several times more than we had ever made before, but it took three years.

To decide that you’re going to act with integrity can be difficult, very difficult. It’s not easy, it’s not straightforward. In fact, at some point, many people will say, don’t go to Prof, you know, those people don’t know what to do, they won’t take a bribe, they won’t pay people.

The bible says that you and I are the salt of the earth, we are the ones who will be the salt in government, will be the salt in our professions, will be the salt in business, in entertainment, and everything.

Let me tell you a quick story about being salt. In June 1999, when I was appointed Attorney General in Lagos, one of the first meetings I had was with about four other Advisers and Commissioners in a very small room in Alausa in Ikeja. One of them was smoking a pipe, you know, this was a very small room, air-conditioned, but it was very small.  The smoke was so much in the room, so I said, “look this man,  stop this.” Anyway, he continued smoking his pipe.

I was a Christian at this time, and one of the things that just struck me, this was my very first meeting, was how can I go out of here smelling all over of cigarettes, what if a member of my church comes by and says,  “ah pastor, are you also smoking small small?” Because from head to toe, I was smelling of cigarettes. But as I thought about it, God laid an impression on my heart that you are the salt, what kind of salt is it that cannot get in the soup? What kind of salt, if you are salt, you must be able to go in, you must be ready to go in there, that’s what salt is about. Salt is not outside; you are meant to flavour the food, that’s your role.

It became clear to me that whether they smoke from morning till night, I had to be there to do my own bit. While I was Attorney General, a former commissioner in the State came to me once and said, “I have a piece of advice for you. I’m surprised to hear that you don’t have land all over Lagos by now. You should have land; you are the one signing all these documents; you should have land. Go and take land.”

I was the one signing all the certificates, in many cases, certificates of occupancy, consent and all of that, but even people who should know better expect you to be corrupt. Even in church, church leaders told me, “that when the previous government was in power, we had money then, but where is your own money?’ Yes, this is the kind of society we’re in. So, we have to be able to step up, we have to be able to step up to the plate as Christians, and it’s not easy, but integrity is not just about resisting bribes and kickbacks; it’s also about ensuring that we are driven by fairness and justice.

One of the pressures that Christians feel in public office is being asked to bend the law for brethren. I was confronted with that situation many, many times. I give one example. There was a case involving the daughter of a senior member of the clergy who was retired. This lady, in a fit of anger, had beaten her house help to death. Now, the case, of course, came to the office of the Attorney General. One evening, at about seven o’clock, the file came to me. I looked at it and all that, and signed off that they should go ahead with the prosecution.

Before I got home, in public service, everything leaks easily, I had two calls already from very senior clergymen who called me to say, “ah ah, we hear that you have said they should go and prosecute the daughter of this man, but you know the man. Don’t you know the man?” Very senior people called me. I said,  “how can we explain it? This girl, who was beaten to death, also has parents and siblings. How can we say that because somebody is important, their own child will not face the consequences of such a serious crime? How will I explain it?” They said, “ah no no no no. You are there for a time such as this. That’s why you are there. You are Esther.” Many times, when we use Esther, we use her to justify misconduct.

Let me conclude by coming back to the theme of the conference: “Take Your Portion.” Beloved, I think taking your portion in nation building does not begin with ambition; it begins with the burden God places in our hearts, not to torment us but to position us. The burden you carry is often a clue to the portion that God has reserved for you.

Some of us are burdened about injustice, some of us are burdened about poverty, some of us are burdened about education, health care, housing, corruption, or the future of our children. These burdens are not accidental; they are invitations.

Here is a hard truth I have to share: prayers alone without participation will not heal a nation. God says, “if my people,” not outsiders, my own people, if they will act, things will change. Faith that stays in the pews, faith that stays in church, faith that fails to go into the public square and confront the real problems, real issues, faith that avoids responsibility, is faith that will leave a nation to groan.

Taking your portion may mean excelling as a public servant who cannot be bought. It may mean running for office and yet not enriching yourself, but to serve. It may mean joining the government, or even just playing your part in business, or any policy space, and insisting on righteousness.

It may mean being a trusted professional, an honest business person, a fair judge, an upright police officer, or an incorruptible administrator. It may mean any of those things. These are not small callings; this is how nations are discipled. But it is costly, it can be lonely, and you’ll be misunderstood, even by fellow Christians. But righteousness has never been convenient, integrity has never been popular, and yet scripture is clear that “righteousness exalts a nation,” and if the righteous withdraw, wickedness does not disappear; it simply takes over.

So my charge to you all is don’t outsource nation-building to others, and then complain about the results. Don’t say politics is dirty, and then abandon it to those who will make it dirtier still. God is not looking for perfect people, He’s looking for faithful people, men and women who will stand, who will serve, who will say, “here I am, Lord, this is my portion.”

I pray that the Almighty God will raise, from this gathering, men and women who will be salt in government, who will be light in institutions, and conscience in the marketplace. I pray that He will give us all the courage to earn the grace to endure the cost and the strength to remain faithful always.

God bless you all.

Thank you.