We started Africa Life Delegate Conference to sensitize people about family, promote professionalism — Praise Fowowe

Praise Fowowe is an International family life strategist, advisor, life coach and crisis manager. He is driven by a vision to build the most desirable families across the globe.

He is an unconventional thinker, futurist and Premier creator and trainer of Family Systems Engineering, a body of knowledge that assists families build systems that support their happiness and assists family life coaches across the globe improve their diagnostic tools and intervention management.

Regarded as the father of Family Systems Engineering, Praise Fowowe has pioneered an entire sector and trained some of the finest family life coaches across the continent of Africa.

An internationally acclaimed Family life strategist with 18years track record of transforming some of the most difficult families, Praise Fowowe works with HNIs across various cultures on 5 continents and consults for various governments on the family systems engineering approach to building a sustainable society.

He is a member of the Family Life Coaching Association USA and International Association of Marriage and Family Counselors (IAMFC)

He is a first choice facilitator for several governments, educational institutions, religious bodies and corporate organizations on family life related issues and one of Africa’s most sought after speakers on family life education. A multiple award winner and a member of the Lagos state steering committee on the prevention of child abuse in the state.

He is the Principal consultant of Center for Sex education and family life. He  has authored several books. Praise is happily married to Oluwatosin and they are blessed with 2 lovely children. He shares his story and the inspiration behind his Africa Life Delegate Conference that was recently launched in Lagos.

Did anything in your childhood prepare you for what you do now?

Absolutely my childhood prepared me for all I do because I was born as the 6th born of an Anglican Priest, so I was very much in the midst of counseling and creating solutions because as an Anglican priest my dad had to counsel a lot of people and ensure there is no excuse for not solving critical church problems. I used to try to get involved in adult discussions which would earn me a knock to my head for not being respectful so I used to have a lot of unspoken questions in my mind about African men and how the family ran. But significant in my history was my sexual abuse from age 4-8 which totally changed my trajectory and made me into a quiet child and later someone you could call a sex addict because I just went overboard. I could not really understand my body or relationships because my father was constantly on the move no thanks to transfers so consistently I was exposed to all forms of cultures which is why I can easily identify with every group. I would say my pains and lessons prepared me for everything I do today.

What made you start the center for sex education and family life?

I finished my mandatory youth service in 2001 and returned to Ajegunle Apapa where my dad was working and one night while taking a walk around Baale street I noticed several teenagers at a particular hotel prostituting, so I decide to make a change by going back disguised as a customer to ‘Toast’ them out of prostitution. I became so successful at that in a way that I became a threat to the owners of brothels who literally placed a price tag on my head. But I noticed a trend that the moment I took girls back home to their parents the more others went to replace them, so we changed our approach from response to prevention. That was how we started gold in the slum where we educated several young people about their lives and provided a sense of direction. Many of those teens are now top me with some already bagging their PHD.

I worked with young people for 8 years of my life in Ajegunle and in 2013 I decided to create a not for profit that would prevent everything responsible for child sexual abuse because there was no content in Nigeria way back as it concerns age-appropriate sexuality education. I wanted a values-based education so that was why we incorporated the center for sexuality education and family which now has a consultative status in the NGO category with the United Nations.

Somehow we successfully gave Nigeria the first ever comprehensive sexuality education which several schools and religious organizations adopted and also created a parenting education to assist parents understand their children because for every commercial sex workers we helped we noticed child sexual abuse and lack of effective parenting. I must say we have done a great job because the results speak for themselves.

You are credited as being the man that organized the family life sector in Nigeria. How did you do that and why did you do it?

While leading the center for sex education and family life I kept seeing a lot of gaps because I used to maintain a weekly article in the dailies in Nigeria and my mails were always full of people asking with their relationships. I tried to help so many while I kept looking for help for others and was shocked that the help available were basically religious leaders. My study showed that other nations had family science as courses in the University but there was no single University that had such. I decided to solve the problem by going to research why marriages failed and succeeded. I interviewed 25 couples that had done 40years and above in their marriages to discover the framework they used only to notice that they did not document what made their marriages work so I asked for permission to observe and take notes which took me years to do after which we built a framework.

I tested the framework and saw it was quite successful but to make it acceptable I wanted to create a psychometry that spoke to the reality of Africans because many of such that existed were foreign so we created a 4 way marital assessment that we branded ‘OYELA’ which means illumination. It is 94% accurate in picking out everything that is wrong with a couple or likely problems that singles would have in their marriage ahead of time.

Once I was done, I was not sure Nigerians would pay for it so I took off to speak to my mentor hoping to get foreign affiliation but he advised me to go back and push it with my life because he believed it would go global which was what I did. I noticed there was no regulated family life sector so I called some of the arrow heads who were passionate about counseling but had no certifications and locked them up for 7days to teach them the model I created called Family Systems Engineering Certification Programming and it was a major hit.

Since then, we started organizing the sector with events and support and today we have over 1000 people who have gone through the program with several religious, educational and even corporate Nigeria adopting the model to effectively assist their people. It has been a long walk to get here but trust me it has been 20years of breaking down, getting depressed and almost giving up yet bouncing back consistently to get the job done.

 You recently opened the Praise Fowowe research LLC office in Texas, how has the reception been ?

The reception has been good after a slow start. I wanted to export our model abroad and create a family life innovation hub because I believed the evil about Nigeria is grossly exaggerated. It was the most challenging step I took because it was like starting all over again and my first event had 9 paid clients which was tough, but people told me they were shocked people actually paid. But we have grown gradually and are now getting into the consciousness of the people that needed us.

We have innovated new solutions that have been tested and now approved and that gives me a job because there is a lot more in us as Africans beyond the negative publicity we have gotten over the years.

You have amazing programmes that have impacted the lives of many families, youths  and children, can you kindly  tell us more about it.

The best way to tell this story is to say the moment I took the first girl out of prostitutions I learnt to innovate solutions for every problem that confronted us since we had no grants or funding, so we had to do the impossible with the available.

For example, when I noticed all the 300 commercial sex workers I worked with were all sexually abused we created the basic sexuality education kit on what to teach about sex from 18months -18years.

When we discovered that all those girls were victim of bad parenting, we innovated the out of the box parenting model which is now in 12 countries but as we went on we discovered many marriages were not working we innovated The Dream team marital formation but to make help accessible to more people we innovated the Family systems engineering certification program.

My life has basically been about innovations based on research with the aim to solve social problems.

Now in America we notice the gap between parents and their children. We have introduced the ready for life child development mentoring program which is a weekly virtual engagement to groom African kids for success everywhere they go. Some schools in Nigeria have adopted the entire curriculum while we have quite a number of parents opting their kids on the program. It covers ages 8-18.

I have also created innovations to support children’s teachers in various churches and finally recently innovated human engineering programming which can assist people who are burnt out or suffering from depression or someone who wants to make a new start, rediscover themselves and find their path all over again. We have deployed it for a number of corporate organizations and their senior managers.

So it is a journey of solving problems and if I see another gap tomorrow that is family or human related I will research and innovate solutions for it.

What is the inspiration behind the Africa family life delegate conference?

7 years ago we discovered there was a United Nations designated date for the family but it was almost as if nothing happened across Africa so we decided to start a pan African conference to sensitize people about the family as well as promote professionalism in that sector so we held the first ever Industry night for family life practitioners and later the African family life delegate conference which we hope to take around various African countries in the future.

We have witnessed a spike in broken marriages since the beginning of the pandemic, what would you say is the cause of this?

The pandemic in my opinion was an examination that fed couples back about their current position assessments because all their distractions were eliminated and for the first-time couples did not know what to do because friendship was never really cultivated. I think the spike was as a result of lack of effective systems and frameworks in many marriages because the moment the activities we all learnt to run to as coping mechanisms were withdrawn, many felt very empty and realized they couldn’t really stand one another.

I think it was a call for couples to go back to the basics and learn to embrace a systems driven marriage that can stand the test of time no matter what happens.

If you could speak to a young couple right now, what would you say to them?

I would tell them to marry their kind. You can never go wrong when you marry your kind as against getting married to your opposites. There is a tool we created called culture compatibility test. Every one of us have our preferred cultures which is what defines us and if you marry someone who has a completely different culture there would be all sorts of culture clash in your marriage that is due to your world views and without a belief’s alignment couples would drift apart but very close to that is the need for us to prioritize personal happiness development because marriage is not what makes people happy.

Who people are is what makes them happy which is why we must promote self -development on all sides. If you look around the world today, there is so much girl child empowerment with little or no boy child empowerment. What would happen in the future is a situation in which there would be so many empowered women with disempowered men which would create a major gap. This is the work of parents in my own opinion.

But overall, I will advise people to marry their kind which would mean those who think and behave like you because once there are beliefs alignment marriage becomes a journey of friends who are building a future that will give our society rest.  

At what age should parents start discussing sex education with their children?

Sex education starts at age 18 and I mean age-appropriate sexuality education. There is what to teach about sex from 18months -3years, 4-6, 7-9. 10-12 and 13-18. These are contents I have created over time because the strength of the predator is the ignorance of the child. Our duty is to educate and empower the child to kick out the predator and there is always what to teach.

Kindly share some important family nuggets with us.

The most important nation on earth is the family because the family is the production factory of the society and to build an effective family systems;

·         Discover yourself and ensure your happiness is up to you

·         Find someone whose happiness is also up to him/her

·         Sit together to develop a family governing system which answers the basic questions like

–         What is our family vision?

–         What are our values?

–         What are our family creeds?

–         Why did we marry?

·         Decide on who both of you must be accountable to because someone who has no authority figures who can call him/her to order is dangerous

·         Discuss and confront issues to prevent pent up emotions

·         Grow into each other because once there is a gap in your personal development you will grow apart.

You wear many hats, and run a very busy schedule, how do you unwind and relax?

I take nature walks everyday which is why I mostly live around nature where I can see a lot of greens and flowers. I also love to cook which gives me a lot of pleasure. I try to see a movie per day, I dance regularly and hang out with friends and family. I am heavy on meditation which calms me down when I become drained and able to pick up my strength.

 You are happily married to an amazing wife, what would you say has kept your marriage thus far. 

We are very intentional because our marriage is driven by systems. We both have different support systems and from day 1 we made up our minds that our selfish interest would never stand in the way of our individual aspirations because marriage must make us better which is why we push ourselves to succeed. We also apologize for our wrongs without making excuses. We are human beings and we make mistakes like everyone else but we try not to repeat our mistakes but we are patient with each other to overcome our struggles.

Mention three men who inspire you and why?

Dr. Myles Munroe inspired me till he died because that was one man who took responsibility for my potential and stretched me beyond my known limits. As my mentor he taught me so many things

Dr. Sam Adeyemi inspires me because after my dad’s death that was one man who never held back from sharing secrets with me. At every milestone I could freely ask questions and I’d get answers. I don’t relate with him as a pastor I relate with him as his boy and he has never let me down. He is the man that could also call me to order infact if my wife wants to scare me she would tell me she wants to report to Dr. Sam.

Eunice Ibukun Fowowe – My mum is the third man since man is humanity expressed in two genders – male and female. My mum taught me how to relate. She spoke Hausa and taught me how to handle people and be patient with them. She is the reason I never give up on anyone because according to her imperfect people must never judge other imperfect people instead, we must support them to attain perfection. She is the single most important person in my journey.

What can we do as a society to curb domestic violence

We must redefine a few concepts and create a culture that promotes the dignity of persons. I built a framework for Lagos state and shared it with several states in Nigeria but only Lagos was a bit interesting which I am hoping that one day would be implemented. Domestic Violence is a system and a culture that can be tamed but the custodians must be willing to do it. That willingness is what I have not found, and it goes deep into our definition and perception of male and female, husband and wife and father and mother.

Once we promote a proper definition as a nation and create the systems and processes from our educational system to our governance, we will raise wholesome men and women who will collaborate as opposed to compete because at the root of domestic violence is superiority beliefs powered by insecurity. The moment I can’t see the next woman as my complement or the feminine expression of me, domestic violence becomes a strong possibility.