IT IS THE WISE THAT BUILDS Being the speech read on behalf of Rev. Titus K. Oyeyemi, Founding President and CEO of African Projects for Peace and Love Initiatives, Inc. NFP, on the occasion of the launching of the KAIROS PEACE AND LOVE CLUB, Adeyemi College of Education Chapter on June 30, 2005 It is a great privilege for me to send this prescient message to members of the KAIROS Peace and Love Club at the Adeyemi College of Education, being launched today, June 30th 2005. The founding of African Projects for Peace and Love Initiatives (APPLI) is predicated on the divine vision the Lord shared with me on August 13, 1996 couched in these words: Africa, the Future Land of Peace. This vision was not unconnected with my burden for peace in the continent of Africa given the perennial and incessant violence and wars plaguing African nations since Independence. Without wasting your precious time, let me quickly introduce you to the aims, objectives, and goals of APPLI. APPLI, pronounced APPLY, is a faith-base grassroots proactive interfaith and interethnic peace movement established with the objective of promoting Ethnoreligious Harmony in Africa through Structured Education for Peace (SEP) and Socio-cultural Adjustment Programs (SAP). The mission of APPLI is to encourage Africans to say NO to wars but YES to peace. A major aspect of our objectives is the launching of grassroots proactive peace clubs and the staging of street peace rallies, for which events we are gathered here today. Our goal is to encourage Africans to cultivate a new lifestyle of Peacebuilding that will enhance economic development, political stability, and religious tolerance among our people. To turn our vision of Africa the Future Land of Peace into an effective mission demands that all hands should be on the deck. As a concept and strategy APPLI has therefore, developed a structure where everyone – the toddler, the aged, the family, the community, the parents, the students, the teachers, the farmers, the technocrats, the consumers, the businessmen, the ruled and the rulers, the religious and the unreligious, the workers and their employers – will be involved in grassroots proactive positive Peacebuilding, as long as they have a grassroots connection. As a faith- base peace organization, we promote pure and total Theology based on the true knowledge of God (epistemology), the pursuit of peace, love and justice (ethics), critical thinking, dialogue and non-violence, as opposed to sectarian, denominational, or religious tenets and traditions of men which are the bedrock of our Ethnoreligious disharmony, misunderstanding, confusion, and the mythical influence of violence and terrorism. Our clarion call for peace is based “on the common human blood that flows in our veins and the concept of universal pain.”  Our approach to Peacebuilding is grassroots and proactive in contrast to post-conflict summit peacemaking or multi- national peacekeeping forces which grossly neglect the input of the grassroots actors like the women, the youth, the aged and the less educated. In the meantime, APPLI is in its awareness campaign stage, launching a series of grassroots peace clubs among which are: i.        the KAYERO Peace Clubs ii.        the KAIROS Peace Clubs iii.        the African Children of Peace Clubs iv.        the Silver Alliance Peace Clubs v.        the Intercessors for Peace Clubs vi.        the New World Peace Legacy Clubs We are also engaged in youth economic empowerment projects and career optimization. For more information about these clubs and how to become a member of any of them, please visit our website at www.africanprojectsforpeace.org or the website of the World Council of Churches under organizations at www. overcomingviolence.org. As the title of this paper suggests, “it is the wise that builds” and the “foolish that destroys.”  APPLI believes that this is the time to start building and stop destroying. Any sincere listener to this address today, who could subject himself or herself to critical self-examination, will identify where he or she had failed to use their position, power and influence to build up something or somebody but instead had tore down or destroyed. It is the time for us to work together to rebuild Nigeria from its ruins. If we do not, nobody will do it for us. We are deceiving ourselves if we think God will do what we should do by ourselves. I am convinced that the Prince of Peace will ride his white horse only on the roads that men have paved.  Every development has a price tag. We as a people have to pay the right price if we want the right development.   Unfortunately, Africans are paying a lot of prices, (untimely death, low quality life, lack of amenities, life devoid of promises, diseases and decay), but not for development. It should be a source of worry to us all that instead of building our nations, we are destroying them. I make bold to say that unless we imbibe a new patriotic spirit of nation building, we will find ourselves to blame for the hardship that will be unleashed on future African generations yet unborn. We should note that anyone who destroys his or her home or joins others to do so will become homeless, beg for shelters and lose his or her dignity. Please, do not forget that the more you beg the more beggarly you get. At this millennium age, pity politics will take Africa no where. A people who repeat the same mistakes again and again are a no people no matter how much educated they claimed to be. It is sad to note that young Africans, especially the students have always thought that the way of violence is the only means through which they can show their power or teach a lesson to their leaders. But contrary is the case, because no-one is learning anything tangible from violence. Violence is not creative, violence is not constructive, and violence is not progressive. The only thing we have reaped from violence is destruction and death. No wonders the scripture says “there is a way that seems right in the eyes of men, but the end thereof is death.”  You are a living witness to many students that have lost their lives in their prime age as a result of their involvement in wanton and destructive student riots and violence. APPLI is now calling on all the youths to change their orientation from destructive violence to constructive and positive Peacebuilding. From now on, let our youths accept the challenges of nation building and shun the tendency for armed struggle and anti-social activities on their campuses that lead into more chaos and confusion. Let our higher institutions of learning take it upon themselves the tasks of nation building. Let’s challenge and encourage our youths to become creative and innovative in whatever career of their pursuit. When Frantz Fanon wrote his seminal work Wretched of the Earth  more than 40 years ago, he included a prescient chapter with the title “the pitfalls of national consciousness.” In that chapter he lamented the corruption and cronyism that would befall those nations that had liberated themselves from colonial masters and installed native elites, stressing the fact that “neither financiers nor industrial magnates are to be found within this national middle class.” One thing common to the elites of all underdeveloped countries, according to Fanon, is that none is engaged in production, or invention, or building, or labor, instead they are “completely canalized into activities of the intermediary sort.” No-one wants to lead the way to progress, the “innermost vocation of everyone seems to be to keep in the running and to be part of the racket.” No-one is teaching uprightness, integrity and culture to the youth within or outside our school systems. Having seen themselves as victims of the systems, African youths have erroneously thought that it pays off to harm and hurt the society rather than improve or uplift their communities. I am therefore taking this opportunity to welcome the KAIROS Peace Club of Adeyemi College of Education to the collegiate of grassroots proactive Peacebuilders that APPLI is assembling in the great continent of Africa. As a historic teachers’ college, Adeyemi College of Education has been known for decades as a builder of men and women of culture, integrity and purpose. By its composition and structure, Adeyemi College of Education is a leadership college that challenges matured and experienced minds in the art of molding the youth into responsible adults. It is therefore my hope that the chapter of KAIROS Peace Club being launched today at Adeyemi College of Education will contribute quality leadership to the much needed Peacebuilding that Africa needs to attain true progress and development. At this stage of African development and emancipation, African youths need great non- violence liberators and moralists like Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) who taught adaptive life to the African Americans; W. E. B. Du Bois who taught the strenuous life to the African Americans; Malcolm X (1925-1965) who taught the defiant life to the African Americans, and last but not the least Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) who taught the integrative life to the African Americans. Proverbs 13:23 says “A poor man’s field may produce abundant food, but injustice sweeps it away.” Let this be a food for thought for us as Africans. Why do we still lack in spite of the abundance with which we have been endowed? In conclusion, I want to express my gratitude and appreciation to the organizers of this event. I thank the provost of Adeyemi College of Education, the entire faculty, the administrative staff, the students and the student government for their participation. I also thank the peace clubs launching committee of the Nigerian Chapter of APPLI who came from Lagos to attend this occasion. I also praise the efforts of Olatunji Oyeyemi, the president of KAIROS FUTA, our first KAIROS club in Nigeria, for his indefatigable efforts in promoting the Adeyemi College of Education’s KAIROS Peace Club. Similarly, I thank Abiodun Salami the president of OOU KAIROS Peace Club and commiserate with him and his fellow campus peacemakers over the recent riot at the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye. I look forward to the coming intercollegiate seminar titled Youth Peace and Nation Building.  To God be the glory. Thank you all. Peace. Shalom. KAYERO! References and Notes