The following are the views expressed by Olufemi Oguntokun in the June 19, 2026 episode of the On the Lord’s Side Podcast — Christian perspectives on news and current events.
ON NIGERIA’S ABDUCTIONS INDUSTRY
Good morning to you once again. It is Friday, the 19th of June 2026.
Many people have looked at the carnage in Nigeria, and it has been labelled in different ways. It has been labelled Christian genocide — and indeed it has been so. You only have to look at the statistics of those who have been attacked in the north, who have been killed, the churches that have been burnt, the pastors who have been abducted and killed, and you will have no reason to disagree. It has been labelled terrorism — and it is terrorism when people force you either to leave your home, your town, your village, or to stop worshipping and congregating together. When people inflict terror because they want you to do a particular thing, that is terrorism. It has been called kidnapping, which is a generic name for those who take people against their will. And it has been called armed banditry, which is the practice of organised armed robbery and violence committed by outlaws, typically operating in gangs in remote or lawless areas. When it is called banditry, you find it is for the purpose of robbing people, for making one gain or another. Many people have said: let us not confuse the banditry and the kidnappings associated with it with the terrorism and the Christian genocide — and that would appear sensible.
So we have a number of things going on, and we need help, divine help, to figure it out. We also need our intelligence services to rise to the occasion. But from where many observers stand, you find that on the one hand you have terrorism, championed by ISWAP, Boko Haram and co. Embedded in that, you have Christian genocide — most likely a terrorism inspired by Christian hatred, which has led to Christian genocide. And then, because of the general insecurity, you now have armed gangs taking advantage of it — either a different set, or a subset, of the terrorists kidnapping people for ransom, making money out of it, and constituting themselves into bandits.
We need to face that reality as clearly as possible. Because if you remember, on this programme we engaged with the story where a security expert made bold to say that, in a particular calendar year, Nigerians were forced to part with money running into trillions of naira to bandits and kidnappers. And people have said: look at this — if so much money is being made by these bandits who are kidnapping people, then we need to follow the money to know who is actually carrying out these things. And in Nigeria, given what we know of ourselves — the greed and the corruption — you begin to understand why it has been difficult to put an end to the banditry and the kidnappings. Why? Because there is money to be made. If these kidnappers are making so much money, then they have more than enough to give to law enforcement officers and security agencies — to do what? To look the other way.
I am saying all this because of a story I came across yesterday. This is a statement credited to one Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, quite a leading political figure in the north, who once briefly served in the administration of President Bola Tinubu, and who is related to Dr. Datti Baba-Ahmed, the Labour Party’s vice-presidential candidate in the 2023 election. According to him, as reported in The Sun, “Kidnappings: how I spent 175 million naira to rescue my nephew.” When you hear that somebody as prominent as Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed — somebody who served, albeit briefly, in the administration of Bola Tinubu — paid 175 million naira to rescue his nephew from kidnappers, then you know how bad the situation truly is.
According to The Sun, the former Special Adviser on Political Matters to Vice President Kashim Shettima, Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, revealed how he spent about 175 million naira to secure the release of his nephew from kidnappers, saying Nigerians who fall victim to abduction are often left to fend for themselves. He made the revelation during an interview on Trust TV’s Politics Today, part of which circulated widely on social media. Recounting the ordeal, he said his nephew — the son of his late sister — was kidnapped alongside three other persons while returning from a farm near Cardinal, on the road to Katia. The victims had lodged in a village facility for the night when the armed bandits struck. In his words: “They went to a farm they had hired, where they used to go and farm. They were kidnapped just a few miles after Cardinal, on the way to Katia. They put up in a house, maybe a hotel, in the village. In the night, bandits came. One of them tried to run away; they followed him, shot him dead, and dragged his body back so the other three could see what would happen if they tried to run. They were taken a few kilometres into the bush and spent 37 days there.”
Then he said: “At that time, I was the special adviser to the President; I was working in the Villa. There was hardly anybody I didn’t speak to.” Pause and reflect on that. This is the experience of somebody who was working in the presidency — special adviser to the Vice President, and so essentially within the presidency, because the President himself appoints the advisers for the Vice President. There was hardly anybody he did not speak to, and yet his nephew remained in captivity. He explained that family members remained in daily contact with both the kidnappers and the victims throughout. “For those 37 days, every single day, we spoke with the bandits and with our nephew and the two other people. Every day they would tell us their condition; every day we would negotiate.”
Then he said: “The very day they picked him up, they said, ‘You are Ismail Shahabi. Your uncle is a special adviser to the President. He’s a big man. He works in the Villa. So we are going to get a lot of money.'” We have to reflect on that. The fact that the victim was related to a person working in government did not deter these people — did not make them afraid, did not make them shudder, did not even make them kill him out of fear. A classic response from kidnappers, when they blindly pick up a person and later discover he is related to somebody high up, is dread; sometimes they kill the victim because they do not want their identity revealed to someone powerful. But in this case, the very opposite. The kidnappers knew the person they had kidnapped was related to the presidency, and that did not deter them. The only thing that occurred to them was: since your uncle works in the presidency, we are going to get a lot of money.
Baba-Ahmed disclosed that the kidnappers initially demanded 25 million naira, alongside motorcycles, drugs, rice and other supplies. “The first time, they said, ‘Give us 25 million,’ and they wanted three motorcycles and a lot of drugs, medication, rice and all sorts of things — and we sent it to them.” So here we have yet another official confirmation that even people in government are paying ransom to these bandits and kidnappers. Then, according to the report, despite providing security agencies with information on the kidnappers’ location, no rescue operation materialised. In his words: “People say, ‘Give us the coordinates,’ and it was easy to get the coordinates. Yes, we gave them all the coordinates” — and still nothing. By the time the captives were freed, the family had spent nearly 175 million naira, made up of about 120 million naira in cash, in three batches. So if you want to know the source of the cash these bandits flaunt on social media — the cash from which they do their so-called giveaways, the cash that funds the motorcycles and the ammunition they use to terrorise people — you now have a good idea.
He claimed that, in one instance, those delivering the ransom money even encountered military personnel who unknowingly directed them towards the kidnappers: “One of the three times they took money, they ran into some military people who said, ‘Oh, you are going in the wrong direction — this is the way to go.'” Can you imagine that? The military personnel knew the kidnappers’ location. And we are not surprised, because when the then Prelate of the Methodist Church was kidnapped two or three years ago, he said the same thing upon his release. You may call it the same old story — but the very fact that we are calling it an old story is the distressing aspect of it. He said the very last payment, close to 100 million naira, was because the kidnappers said it was their final demand and they wanted it within 48 hours or they would kill the captives. His nephew told them: “They will kill us.”
Somebody out there will say, “Tell me something I don’t know.” And as I said, the fact that we are treating this as “tell me something I didn’t know before” is itself the distressing part. The government of Nigeria should be ashamed that reports like these are out there and are true. I find no reason why someone of Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed’s standing would lie about this. The former Prelate of the Methodist Church said practically the same thing. So now we know — it should no longer be a matter of conjecture — that persons associated with the government also find themselves paying ransom when their loved ones are kidnapped. Now think about people who would have no access to this kind of money at short notice, and you understand the many who are said to have disappeared, said to have been killed by these bandits.
At the end of the day, from a Christian perspective, it all goes back to a nation whose moral fabric has been torn down — a nation whose social fabric, conscience and moral compass are anchored on wealth. This is exactly what happens. The kidnappers and bandits know there is so much illicit wealth in Nigeria, and they target it; they want to get a portion of their own. Because everything is denominated in money terms, and not in terms of right or wrong, you find that even those tasked with protecting and defending the nation and its people are now only looking for how to get a cut from the kidnappers. It has become an industry of sorts. That is the point I want to make.
And what brought this home to me was a tweet by Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, a professor of law, quite vocal and popular on X in Nigeria. Pointing to the video of Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, he wrote: “For those who routinely underestimate Nigeria’s abductions industry and the reach of the complicities implicated in its durability, this chilling testimony by Baba-Ahmed should provide some clarity.” It was that phrase that caught my attention — “Nigeria’s abductions industry.” And that is what it has become. It is not just criminality; it is an industry. When you use the word “industry,” you are not talking about one person or one enterprise; you are talking about related enterprises working towards the same end — a value chain of sorts, where one person does this, another does that, all cooperating towards a symbiotic end where everybody benefits. A network of enterprises. Credit to Chidi Odinkalu — he has always been good with his use of words — he nailed it when he called it Nigeria’s abductions industry.
So you have the people, the military personnel, who point those bringing ransom money in the right direction. You have the bankers who sometimes facilitate the transfers. You have those who look the other way. Because in this kind of industry, the enterprise does not always involve you doing something — often it involves you not doing something. We think of enterprise as requiring the doing of something, but in this sad, horrible, criminal industry, what some of these so-called entrepreneurs are required to do is precisely nothing. I am talking about law enforcement officials who, instead of mounting a challenge, decide to look the other way and pretend they have not heard. And you would be surprised that some of the very people to whom Baba-Ahmed took his matter, saying “help us, my nephew has been kidnapped,” were people waiting to get a cut out of the ransom.
“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” That is what the Bible teaches, and we are finding it out the hard way in Nigeria. A nation that is so corrupt, where everything is defined in money terms; a nation where political leaders themselves buy their offices, buy their party tickets by handing out as much as 5,000 US dollars per delegate at conventions; a nation where the top brass of the military has a reputation for helping themselves to the allocations meant for the military, and the same with the police; a nation where even the judges, unfortunately, are not beyond reproach; a nation where the ordinary person is just hoping for his own opportunity to help himself to the commonwealth — that is not a nation that will have peace. Sin is a reproach, and for the Bible to call it a reproach, there is so much embedded in that word. That is why, when the Bible gave us the prescription for nations to come out of trouble, in Chronicles, it says: “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.” We cannot be surprised that we are where we are. We cannot be surprised that there is an abductions industry where some people are rewarded simply for not doing anything, for looking the other way. And in such an evil industry, they begin to eat themselves.
Sometimes it is not that the President himself is part of the industry; sometimes it is the helplessness of the President. Imagine the top brass of the military being complicit in what is going on. Imagine the top brass of the police force being complicit. Imagine some of the top civil servants knowing about these things. Imagine some of the village heads, chiefs, kings and politicians being complicit. And then imagine yourself as President or as a state governor. You are not going to go into the forest yourself to arrest them; you can only rely on the advice and recommendations given to you by these subordinates. You shout at the top of your voice, “I need a strategy to address this,” and they say, “Yes, sir, yes, sir, we will give you a strategy” — and obviously they give you a strategy that will not work, because they are benefiting from it all. Which takes us back to the matter we reflected on yesterday: how people pay to influence public opinion, and how they pay to influence the recommendations that government advisers give to decision-makers. When the Bible exhorts us to pray for those in authority so that we may have peace in our time, the Bible is, again, absolutely correct. Even if you do not like the person who is your President or your leader, you had better start praying for him — that he will be a captive of the will of God, and that he will not make the wrong decisions.
ON CORRUPTION AND WHERE REVIVAL MUST BEGIN
We have to pray for a revival in Nigeria. Until we disentangle ourselves from the chokehold of corruption and of money, this reproach will continue. Anytime we read that portion from Chronicles — “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and turn from their wicked ways” — well, we have not turned yet. We need a deliverance, and all we can pray at that point is, “Lord, just have mercy upon us.” It is so terribly sad. Dr. Baba-Ahmed has confirmed that 175 million naira was paid. So do you now think that security expert who said the bandits got as much as a trillion naira in ransom in a single calendar year was wrong? I am talking about a nation whose moral fabric is torn and broken, where people cannot be trusted, where money rules and there is corruption everywhere — in the civil service, in the judiciary, in the public service, in the private sector, at almost every level. You have to wonder what exactly is the problem with this nation, which is also reputed to be one of the most religious in the world. Think of the number of churches, the number of Christian ministries like ours, the number of people who identify as Christians. Think about that, and think about it again.
I say this because I came across the video of one of the popular entrepreneurs in Nigeria, Adefunke Soyibo, who runs the enterprise HNK Interiors and has a substantial following on Instagram — some 79,000 followers. She released a video yesterday, which my wife sent to me. She almost broke down in tears; though her face was made up, you can only imagine what led her to make it. In her words: “Hello, people. If you’re running a business in Nigeria — you own a business, and you have an office or a store or a showroom — and you are not fully, and I repeat, fully involved, if you are not fully on the ground in the day-to-day running of that business, you are just fooling yourself. Just go and shut down the business. Because by the time you realise the damage, the havoc, you won’t even be able to cry; it will be too bad. I’ve been at one of my branches all day today, and what my eyes saw, my mouth cannot even say. It’s bad. If you’re in business and you’re not on top of it, don’t bother — just go and shut down that business.”
Can you imagine? And this is not something new — again I find myself saying that somebody out there will say, “Femi, tell us something we did not know.” And that is really the proof of where we are, the trajectory of our moral compass as a nation. Here is a private entrepreneur saying what you probably already know if you operate in Nigeria: that if you run a business but are not personally involved, you will soon find the people you employ running it into the ground — because people help themselves to your money, they make deals with your suppliers, they cut deals here and there just to shortchange you. There is something wrong with our moral compass as a nation, notwithstanding that we are such a religious nation and we call on God.
Somebody responded to that lady: “Sorry for the experience. When they say there is no job in Nigeria, you can see otherwise. Private individuals establish businesses and Nigerians will run them down — not because they are not competent to run the business, but because every time you start something, there is somebody out there thinking, ‘How can I personally benefit from this?'” And these are people you are paying — you have agreed on a wage, you are paying them — yet they are always thinking how to benefit on the side. I had that experience first when I was the president of the law students in the law faculty, and we were organising the law dinner. We had a social secretary and other officers, and we made fantastic plans to stage a beautiful dinner. We had sold tickets, so we had an idea of the numbers, and we made provision for food and drinks accordingly. We left much of it to the social secretary. As the evening wore on, we started seeing so many people trooping into the venue, and we wondered: did we not sell only so many tickets? The place became overcrowded. It was such a debacle, such an embarrassment, that my secretary and I would never want to recall it. But the investigation showed that some members of our own executive had counterfeited the original tickets, sold their own, and made money from it. That was when I learned my first lesson about how bad people can be.
Now, this is not just about Nigerians; this is about the human condition — the fallen, wicked human condition. It is sad, but it is often said of Nigerians, because many people come to establish a business here and find that the moment you are not paying close attention, people take advantage of you. I bring it up to reflect, after the corruption in the polity — in the public service, the civil service, the military, the police, the judiciary — and to see that corruption, that denomination of our moral fabric in money terms, as the root cause of the banditry and of the so-called abductions industry. That is the root cause. And we must not excuse ourselves. Although our politicians are corrupt — a proven fact — and although there appears to be corruption in the military, the police and the judiciary, there is also corruption in the private sector, and many entrepreneurs find it difficult to find faithful people to whom they can commit their businesses.
The takeaway is not to deny the obvious; it is for you and me to ask ourselves a question. People paint everyone with the same brush, and some say, “Don’t be too hasty, don’t overgeneralise, don’t paint everybody with the same brush.” But because it is so endemic, perhaps those who paint everyone with the same brush can be excused. The real question is: who alone can number the corrupt and accurately identify them? It is the Lord. It is the Holy Spirit, the Lord God Almighty. He knows. And the way we must challenge ourselves is this: if the Lord were to name and identify those who are corrupt in this nation, those who cannot be trusted with the resources of the nation, or of their company, or of their employees — would you be among the number? Would I? And if today you find that you would be in that number, let it be a call to repentance. If there is going to be a revival in Nigeria, it must start with me, and with you. That is the only time we can truly go to God and say, “Lord, I have messed up; help us out of this horrible condition.”
My heart goes out to this lady who almost broke down in tears. There are many families who have had to sell houses and lands and go into debt just to get their loved ones out of captivity, and they too look at the condition of Nigeria and almost break down in tears. Did I say almost? Many people have broken down in tears, still crying, asking, “What sort of country is this, where people are kidnapped and nobody does anything, and private individuals have to shell out money — money they often do not even have — to get their people out of captivity?” None of us who is on the Lord’s side should be the cause of other people shedding tears over the wickedness and corruption in our society. This is where we are. It is as sad as it can be. Let us pray for a revival — and may that revival begin in me, and in you.
ON SELF-MADE RELIGION AND THE LONGING TO SEE GOD
Next, I want to engage with this story. Somebody wrote on X — a Christian from the United States, I believe — reacting to a video posted from someone in India. You really need to see this video; it is on X. The original video is captioned: “In India, this guru has been standing upright for 12 years to be able to see his beloved God, Shiva.” Standing for 12 years to see Shiva. Why would people do that?
I did a check on this story, and according to Gemini, the Indian ascetic Daraji Maharaj has drawn global attention for reportedly standing upright for nearly 12 years as an act of extreme penance and devotion, to seek a divine glimpse of Lord Shiva. He is said to have abandoned his university studies to take up this severe spiritual vow. So this is somebody who, wanting to see the so-called Lord Shiva, made a vow that he would remain standing upright until the god revealed himself — and he has been standing that way for nearly 12 years.
I call Lord Shiva a small-letter-g god, but to those who practise Hinduism, Lord Shiva — known as Mahadev, “the god of gods” — is one of the principal deities. As the third member of the holy trinity (Hinduism also recognises a trinity), he functions as the destroyer and transformer of the universe, clearing the way for new creation and cosmic renewal. If you understand Hinduism, you know it believes in renewal, in reincarnation, in creation being destroyed and renewed in an endless cycle.
So this guru, at some point in university, had it occur to him that to see Lord Shiva he must go and do an act of extreme penance and devotion. And he said to himself, “Lord Shiva, I just want a glimpse of you, and I will remain standing upright until you reveal yourself to me.” In the video, you see that the man’s legs are swollen; you see him moving and kicking from time to time, trying not to stand completely still, because it is taking a toll on his health. The legs and feet are swollen; some parts have blackened; the legs are not looking healthy at all — they look terribly traumatised. And the American who commented on this wrote: “India needs Jesus.” Indeed, the whole world needs Jesus.
I would say so, because it means that even in this age, 2026, there are many people who think that by their own acts of pain, their own extreme sacrifices, they can earn a sight of the Lord — which is the very thing Christ came to the world to address, and the glory of the sacrifice He made. Paul made this point so beautifully in Colossians 2. A lot of people say, “I’m going to deny myself food for seven years, for ten years; I’m not going to eat, because I want to see the Lord.” Now, there is a distinction. If you are fasting and saying, “When I indulge in the regular things — not bad indulgence, but ordinary eating and drinking — I am not able to focus on prayer and Bible study, so I want to deny myself something in order to focus,” that is a good thing. But there is the other aspect, where people say, “If I do something extreme — not eating for seven days, or forty days — God will look at me and say, ‘Wow, this person is desperate to see me.'” There are people in history who have abandoned everything, gone into the woods and the mountains, because they wanted to see God and did not want any distraction. People have locked themselves in monasteries for a lifetime; people have done all sorts of physical things, denying their bodies this and that, saying, “If I make this extreme sacrifice, God will know I am truly interested in seeing Him, and He will reveal Himself to me.”
People like that should go and read Colossians 2:23, where Paul was talking about precisely these things — places, actions, sacrifices, severity to the body. He said: “These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” Many things look valuable, as if they will stop the indulgence of the flesh. This gentleman, when he began standing upright to see the so-called Lord Shiva, must have said to himself, “I’m going to abandon university, education and everything in the world, and stand upright by this wall. There will be no temptation here; I will not see anyone who will tempt me to unholy thoughts or relationships; I will not be involved in the everyday things of the world that drop me into sin.” And that is the thinking of so many people: “I don’t want to sin, therefore I will shut myself away” or “every time I sin, I’ll stand upright for twelve hours a day” — all sorts of human-wisdom interventions thought to connect us to God and reconcile us to Him. And Paul said of those things that they have an appearance of wisdom, but no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
That is why you can go and read of the horrors and atrocities that took place in some of the monasteries, and the churches where people took vows of chastity, and see what horrible things went on. Just recently there was a news story of some monks from an Asian country who, when raided by the police, were found with a stash of pornography and other criminal materials. So sad. And that is why, in the ultimate sense, the answer is in the song that says “Jesus is the answer for the world today.” This is what Christ has come to save us from. You want to see the Lord? Jesus said to His disciples, “You have seen Me, and you are still saying you want to see the Lord? You have seen Me” — Christ, who was sent from God. When we see videos like this, of a guru in India who has been standing upright for twelve years to see the so-called Lord Shiva, we need again to thank God for the salvation brought to us by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who has made the ultimate sacrifice.
Why would you stand for twelve years? Why would you beat yourself, flagellate yourself, cut yourself, or do other extreme acts, thinking you could pay your way into being reconciled with God? If you are making denials here and there because you want your heart to be focused on seeking God, that is a separate thing. But if you are doing things to punish yourself so that God will have pity on you, you are totally mistaken. You do not need to punish yourself for God to have mercy on you. None of us can pay for our own sinfulness; indeed, we are so sinful that God has no business relating with us. But the price has been paid, the sacrifice has been made, the punishment has been borne by Jesus Christ — and that is the glory of the gospel. That is the blessedness of the relationship into which He has called us. He has paid it all, and that is why we can now approach the throne of grace with confidence and find mercy and grace in our time of need.
This person wrote, “India needs Jesus; the whole world needs Jesus.” There are many people who long to see the Lord — there is that impulse in every human being. It was Augustine of Hippo who wrote, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.” That is the human heart: until it is reconciled with its Maker, it is truly restless. The question is, how do you reconcile with your Maker? Here is a guru who has been standing upright for twelve years. So, Christians, we have our work cut out for us — the work of evangelism. There are still many people who think to themselves, “I can earn my way into heaven, I can earn my way into reconciliation with God; I’m going to keep standing until He shows Himself to me, even if my legs break, even if my legs are destroyed.” As Christians, shouldn’t we rejoice that we do not need to keep standing? We only need, by faith, to call on the name of Jesus, to plead the blood of Jesus, and we are reconciled with the Father.
My heart truly breaks for this guru. My heart breaks for the many people still labouring under the mistaken belief that they can pay their way into reconciliation with God. And my heart is filled with joy again at the salvation brought to me by my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I am humbled again that Christ died for me — and I hope you are too — and the blood will never lose its power. That is the glory of the gospel. It should fill us with joy and gratitude and lead us into everlasting worship of the Lamb who was slain. It should also burden our hearts that there are still many people in the world who do not know this, who do not believe it, who are trying to pay their way into heaven. Jesus has paid it all, and we should glorify His name now and forevermore.
I want to thank you very much for staying with me this morning on GospelBells Radio, On the Lord’s Side — Christian perspectives on news and current events. I pray and hope to be with you again next week by the grace of God. Whatever you do today and this weekend, please remain firmly on the Lord’s side. God bless you. You are listening to GospelBellsRadio.com, the Christian internet radio with a mission to engage the culture with the mind of Christ. Keep listening, and invite others too. God bless you. Engaging the culture with the mind of Christ.
