The following are the views expressed by Olufemi Oguntokun in the July 3, 2026 episode of the On the Lord’s Side Podcast — Christian perspectives on news and current events.
ON PATERNITY, LEGACY, AND NUMBERING OUR DAYS
Good morning to you once again. It is Friday, the 3rd of July 2026.
This morning we begin in Uganda. I have never been to Uganda, but as part of the African continent I know a bit about it — and particularly about its famous or infamous former president Idi Amin Dada, and its long-serving current president, Museveni. But we are not talking about politicians today. I want to talk about Paul Job Kafeero — also known as the “Golden Boy of Africa” — a prominent Ugandan Afro-folk singer and pioneer of the Kadongo Kamo style, a traditional one-beat, acoustic-guitar-driven genre often featuring storytelling and lyrics rooted in local life, love, morality and social issues. It was a big deal in Uganda.
Kafeero was born on July 12, 1970, in a village in what is now Buikwe District, formerly part of Mukono District. Around the age of 16, about 1987, he formed his first group, the Pluto Boys, and rose to fame in the 1990s with prolific output, becoming one of Uganda’s most celebrated musicians for his emotive voice, his guitar skills and his culturally resonant songs. But he died young — on May 17, 2007, at the age of 36, in a hospital in Kampala, from complications linked to kidney failure (some reports suggest malaria, but the more compelling reports point to kidney failure). Why are we talking about a Ugandan musician you may never have heard of if you are in Nigeria? Because when he died, he left behind significant assets — land, houses, music royalties — estimated in billions of Uganda shillings, with over a million US dollars in land value alone. So he died significantly rich at 36.
And this has led to nearly two decades of bitter disputes among his claimed heirs. You always know that is where it leads when a person leaves behind significant assets without taking pains to organise his affairs: what follows is a protracted, bitter dispute among the heirs. It happens even where a man lived monogamously with just his nuclear family — but such disputes become far more bitter and complicated when a person had many claimed heirs. This culminated in a Ugandan court ordering the exhumation of his body. And here is why we are discussing it: how many people claimed to be his biological children? For a man who died at 36 — twenty-five. Twenty-five persons claimed to be his biological children, and since his death all of them have been making claims to his estate. Those 25 did not come from one woman; he was believed to have had them by different women. So these children and their mothers have been locked in a bitter dispute.
Why now, in 2026? Because on the 1st of June 2026, almost twenty years after his death, a court in Uganda ordered his body exhumed for DNA testing. And before I tell you the outcome — I remember, when I was much younger and my dad was pastoring at the church where we grew up, we attended the wake-keeping service for an elderly man who had died in his 80s, whose children were grown and married with children of their own. He left significant things behind — a notable property on our street in Lagos — but his family affairs were left in shambles. I recall the title of my dad’s exhortation that night. He spoke in Yoruba, to elderly Yoruba people, and titled it, “Bó sùn, ò ní sùn” — which my mother would always reference to challenge us, it was so profound. It translates, roughly: even when you have slept, you will not sleep. It speaks to the person who departs this world leaving behind shambles — estates not taken care of, disputes not resolved, truths not told, reconciliations not made. For such a person, even after sleeping in death, his affairs will not sleep.
We know the sentimental expression when someone dies, “May his soul rest in peace,” and the one borrowed from Scripture, “The memory of the righteous is blessed.” But where a person has not applied a heart of wisdom and leaves behind unresolved issues, or the legacy of an undisciplined life, what follows is that although he has died and slept, figuratively, he will find no true rest. The body decays, the soul is dealt with by its Maker — but the memory of that person, and all he did while on earth, will be called to remembrance. We know from a Christian perspective that on the day of judgment everything each of us did on earth will be called to account; but the reality is that even in this life, after we are gone, the things we did will be called to remembrance, and people will be affected by them, whether or not it is taken before a formal court of law.
So this man died at 36, leaving behind 25 children claiming to be his, and on June 1, 2026 his body was exhumed. And of those 25, how many were found, through DNA testing, to be biologically his? Four. The other 21 were not his. This story highlights the themes of fame, wealth, promiscuity, paternity fraud, and the chaos of estate disputes that can disturb even the grave. And it is so true — there are things that can disturb even the grave. His music legacy endures; people still listen to him, and his estate probably still earns royalties. But this is surely not what he would have wanted to be remembered for.
If you are in Nigeria, this must remind you of a late Nigerian business magnate, politician and philanthropist — Chief MKO Abiola, who lived from 1937 to 1998. He too was musically inclined in his youth, founding a band as a teenager, before becoming a major patron of Nigerian musicians, a business magnate, a philanthropist across Africa, and, in his later years, a politician who sought the presidency of Nigeria. He left behind vast wealth. In my early days as a lawyer I worked in a firm that attempted to unravel the complications of his estate — I remember working on such a file, and we could not unravel it; it has not been fully unravelled even today, though he died in 1998. The disputes are still there. In Abiola’s case, numerous claimants — about 113 by some accounts — claimed to be entitled to share in his estate, and a significant number failed DNA tests and were excluded; accounts vary, but in the end only around 54 or 55 were confirmed as his biological heirs. This caused family turmoil, legal battles, and public discussion of paternity in polygamous and high-profile contexts.
How do we engage with this from a wisdom perspective? There is a quote that applies: “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies — a child, or a book, or a painting, or a house, or a wall built, or a pair of shoes made. It doesn’t matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.” Even the poorest man leaves something behind — it could be a legacy of kindness, of courage, of faithful service; or a legacy of indolence, timidity, hatred, cantankerousness — or a legacy of promiscuity so profound that after death it leaves behind bitter disputes like this, over which many people have destroyed themselves. Another apt quote: “What we leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” And wisdom traditions remind us, over and over, that a good name is better than great riches. If you go to the Bible, it says, “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom” — not just to number our days, but to apply our hearts to wisdom. And one of the most direct and chilling portions of Scripture, Galatians 6: “Do not be deceived — God cannot be mocked. Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”
This story from Uganda is a reminder, to call a spade a spade, of the importance of decent living. Had this man had his wife and children, other complications might have arisen, but surely not something this scandalous. Some are so hardened as to say, “What’s the big deal? The dead is gone; even if there are scandals afterwards, so what?” But that can only come from a heart that is hardened and inherently irresponsible — “I don’t care what is said about my name after I’m gone, I don’t care what people get up to after I’m gone.” Anyone who holds such a view has no honour for himself and no interest in the peace of others.
Looking more deeply, both Abiola’s and Kafeero’s stories highlight the brokenness of human relationships outside God’s design for fidelity and covenant. Once a relationship steps outside God’s original design, what follows? Disputes, heartaches, disasters, disgrace, shame. And we must also talk about paternity deception — so we are not speaking only of the man who most likely lived irresponsibly, but of the women who deceived him for years and were finally found out. Paternity deception harms the innocent — the children — because there are innocent people involved. A child who all his life believed he was fathered by this musician now discovers he was not; the youngest of them must be about 20, and think of the disgrace among his peers and the many other consequences. So for those who practise paternity fraud, remember that you violate God’s command against falsehood, you hurt innocent people, and you violate the sanctity of marriage. We are called to live as stewards and to prioritise our spiritual legacies. Those outside the Lord’s side say, “I just want to have as much as possible”; but the Christian says, “My duty is to bring up my children in the way of the Lord, so that we glorify Him.”
I want to end where I began, with that haunting exhortation from the wake-keeping service: even after you are dead, you may not experience the rest that death should bring. Death does not end accountability before God. So it is foolhardy for anyone to say, “If I’m dead, I’m dead; the dead is long gone.” No — that person and his legacy will continue to be judged in this world, and certainly in the world to come. But we must end on a note of hope: there is forgiveness for past sins through Christ. “All sins will be forgiven men,” Jesus proclaimed — I do not care what mistakes you have made, and the Lord does not care; He will forgive. He said only the sin against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven — and what is that sin? It is to refuse to accept Him as Lord and Saviour, to reject the revelation of Christ as Saviour after He has revealed Himself to you. That is the only sin that ends in hell; every other sin, Jesus said, will be forgiven, if you simply turn to Him. No matter how egregious the thing you have done, turn to Him today and He will forgive you. No matter how complicated a man’s or woman’s life has become, let that person turn to God and say, “Help me,” and you will be surprised what help comes. No matter what dispute exists in a relationship, turn to God and say, “Lord, heal this relationship, bring about reconciliation,” and you will be surprised what the Lord will do.
I pray that the bitterness, disputes, confusion and scandal this young man left behind will serve as an instruction to you and me to heed Psalm 90, where the Holy Spirit, through the pen of Moses, gives us a prayer to say every morning: “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.” Because — Bó sùn, ò ní sùn — even when you are dead, if you leave behind unresolved issues, disputes not settled, forgiveness not sought, explanations not made, clarifications not given, hidden sins and hidden matters, they all come to light, not only on the day of judgment but even in this world when you are gone. And even if your greatest wish was that people would forget everything after your death, everything will be brought to light — and it will be found that the one who thought he had escaped scrutiny by death still stands in the dock, in the court of public opinion, and certainly in the court of God’s judgment. May the Lord help us to apply our hearts unto wisdom.
ON A RESCUE FROM THE RUBBLE AND THE LIMITS OF OUR KNOWLEDGE
Next, a heart-warming story from Venezuela. Remember the earthquake that shook Venezuela about a week ago, around the 24th of June? We reflected at length in an earlier episode on how, in mere seconds, magnificent buildings, investments and lives were lost. But yesterday I came across a story that truly warmed my heart. Among the many viral videos from the disaster is one of a small dog rescued alive from the rubble after days trapped — some suggest more than eight days. There are similar stories of people and animals pulled from the rubble after buildings collapsed, and these should hearten us and give us joy.
There have been amazing rescues throughout history. People have been trapped in collapsed buildings, in wells, in rivers — at the point where everyone said, “This cannot possibly end in rescue” — and then drawn out alive, going on to live remarkable lives. Think of survivors of terrible car crashes: you look at the wreck and say, “It is not possible that anyone survived this,” and then someone says, “I was in that car, and I am alive, without a single injury.” These things give glory to God. Now, some will say, “We would rather the accident, or the earthquake, had not happened at all than celebrate the rescue of two or three from the rubble.” And I have no answer for you except this: we are not our own. There is a God who rules and reigns over the affairs of men, and He does not delight in afflicting the children of men — that is something you must know about Him, from Lamentations 3. If He has allowed anything to happen, however tragic, it is because in His infinite wisdom, which we will never fully understand, it was right for such things to happen.
There is a Latin maxim I came across on a friend’s WhatsApp status: finitum non capax infiniti — the finite cannot contain or grasp the infinite. We who are finite are limited in what we know, in what we understand, in what we can ever possibly understand. And yet look at what man has achieved — technology, and so much more; it needs no buttressing. Those who study these things tell us that what we now know amounts to perhaps only two or five per cent of what can be known; the things yet unknown are far more than the things we know. And even the things we do know, we do not fully understand — their purposes, origins and ends are beyond our capacity. We are the finite ones. And then there is God, who is infinite, whose knowledge is boundless, who knows all things because He created and controls all things. So we must accept our place: the finite cannot grasp the infinite. That is why the psalmist said, of God’s perfect knowledge, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.” At one point in Scripture the Lord told a prophet, in effect, “I am doing something that, if I told you, you would not believe” — and I think that is what God would say to me or to you, if we went to Him demanding, “Why would You allow this to happen?” He would say, “I am doing things you are not going to understand.”
I pray we will have the wisdom to accept God as the infinite One, and ourselves as the finite ones — and, beyond that, to see Him as utterly different from ourselves. There is so much wickedness and evil in the human heart, but not one modicum of wickedness in God. He is holy; He does not willingly afflict the children of men; He is good, and good in all He does. So you ask me, “Femi, do you understand the goodness of God in that earthquake in Venezuela?” Of course I do not — I am the finite one. But the just shall live by faith. So I live by faith, believing that God is good, that His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations. I do not understand, but I trust Him.