Otabil: There’s nothing excellent about African Leaders

Pastor Mensa Otabil says there’s nothing excellent about African Leaders for them to bear the title “His Excellency”.

Speaking about the qualities of a good Leader at his Church’s Greater Works 2013 Conference in Ghana’s national capital Accra, Dr. Mensa Otabil said: “African Leaders like ‘your Excellency’, ‘his Excellency’; I mean what is excellent about you in the first place for you to be called Excellency?” He wondered.

“I mean let’s start getting rid of this obsession with titles and position and honourable and Pastor and Reverend”, the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC) General Overseer advised.

According to him, “one of the things I’ve come to know is that sometimes the worst thing you can give to a person is a title. A person is good until he’s given a title. People serve in the Church until you call them Pastor and they lose their brains. People serve in their communities until they call them ‘honourable’ and all of a sudden they walk differently, talk differently, and the things that they used to do that made them have the opportunity is gone because we think leadership is the adornment [of titles], but Leadership is who you are without a title. Forget about your title”.

Citing the practice in his Church as an example worth emulating, Pastor Mensa Otabil said: “…When we advertise our speakers we don’t [add] Archbishop so and so; Bishop so and so; His Lordship so and so; it’s just your name. When my parents gave birth to me I was Mensa Otabil; they didn’t say this is the General Overseer. If you are not comfortable with your name, [then] you are not comfortable with yourself”.

As far as Pastor Mensa Otabil is concerned, a good leader is not known by what title he holds or how famous he is or how wealthy he is.

“…Leaders are leaders before they start leading,” he noted.

He observed that one of the challenges African leaders have is their obsession with titles.

“…There’s a particular African President whose name comes after about six titles; by the time you get to his name you’ve forgotten whom you are talking about”, he observed.