The following are the views expressed by Olufemi Oguntokun in the October 22, 2026 episode of the On the Lord’s Side Podcast — Christian perspectives on news and current events.
And it’s good morning to you once again. It’s Thursday, the 22nd of October 2026, and this is On the Lord’s Side, Christian perspectives on news and current events. My name is Olufemi Oguntokun. You can follow me on X at @OlufemiOG, and you can follow GospelBells Radio on X at @GospelBelsRadio.
ON FAKE DRUGS, AND THE ERROR OF ETHNIC FRAMING
I want to begin with a matter of grave concern to everyone in Nigeria — the menace of fake products and fake drugs — brought back into public discourse recently, and in particular by the well-known social-media food critic Famakin, who stepped in and said a great deal, some of it controversial. For listeners who are not Nigerian: ours is a multi-ethnic nation, and we are too often divided along those lines. This food critic, a Yoruba man from the south-west, opened by addressing “Dear Igbo people” — that is, people of the south-east — and asked them not to listen with an emotional ear. He conceded that the “number two hub” for fake goods is Kano in the north — “we don’t know the tribe that does it there, so, to soften the blow, let’s say it’s the Hausa” — but then insisted that “we know the tribe” behind the number-one hub, and asked, in effect, “Are you not tired of using tribalism and ‘Igbophobia’ as a shield while all of us are dying? These fake perfumes, fake drinks, fake alcohol are not targeted only at Yorubas and Hausas — all of you are dying too, you included.”
Begin where he is right: all of us are dying, and the danger cannot be overstated. In September 2026, in Ondo State, methanol-laced herbal and alcoholic concoctions were discovered; the Director-General of NAFDAC — our Food and Drug agency — Professor Mojisola Adeyeye, reported around 182 cases and 48 confirmed deaths (the state’s health commissioner put it at 49), from a single state: people who died from ingesting methanol, with several left blind or partially blind. I cite this only to buttress a point that hardly needs making: fake and adulterated products are lethal, and it is a no-brainer. And understand the structure of the trade: about 70% of Nigeria’s pharmaceuticals are imported, with China and India the top sources of counterfeits, because weak local manufacturing leaves a vacuum in a nation of nearly 200 million. The known problem markets — Idumota on Lagos Island, Onitsha in the south-east — are named by the regulator in the same breath; NAFDAC has sealed thousands of shops, acted against truckloads in the south-east, and destroyed fake products worth about ₦1.5 trillion in three years. And remember the story we engaged recently about counterfeit drugs reaching even cancer patients — which, given all we know, has every semblance of truth.
Reflect first on the sinfulness of it. Deuteronomy 25 condemns false weights; Amos speaks of those who “sell the refuse of the wheat” — the man who pretends to sell wheat but hands over the chaff; evil has always done this. And let us be clear: these counterfeiters are not merely thieves, not merely obtaining money by false pretence. They are trading in death. The counterfeiter does not take money for nothing; he takes money in exchange for a death. “Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity” (Habakkuk 2:12). Whoever imagines he is building a fortune, a business, a dynasty — but on the blood of others — woe to him. And it is reckless, as the critic himself noted: Proverbs 26 — “As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am I not in sport?” He flings deadly things about, not reckoning that they may harm him too, or those who would otherwise care for him.
So the subject is serious, factual, a clear and present danger — and we thank the critic for bringing it back to public consciousness. But there is a right way and a wrong way to approach it, and his ethnic framing is the wrong way — not merely unkind, but wrong. And I don’t say that only out of a wish to protect people or be kind; I have always said on this programme that if a thing is true, it should be said, gently, without shrinking to avoid offence — but this simply is not true as framed. Look at the facts. Seventy per cent of these drugs are imported; the counterfeit oncology drugs NAFDAC exposed earlier were manufactured abroad by the same network that also hit Turkey and the Philippines. This is not a Nigerian problem, let alone an Igbo one or a Kano one or an Ondo one. The regulator’s own DG names Onitsha in the south-east and Idumota in Lagos in one breath. Someone incorrigible will insist those Lagos shops are “probably Igbo-owned” — but the methanol that killed dozens was made in a Yoruba town by a man with a Yoruba name; the NAFDAC DG herself is Yoruba; and the customs officers who look the other way and let these products in — are they all of one ethnic stock?
Here is the error of the secular mind — the mind that refuses to see things from a biblical perspective: it reaches for the ethnic lens, the tribal lens, the gender lens. It’s because of the Igbos, or the Hausas, or the women, or the youth, or the old, or the Chinese, or the Indians. But this is not a tribal problem; it is a human problem, and the underlying factor is the sinfulness of man. So no one on the Lord’s side should be in this trade at all — because, as we have always said, for a Christian the first question at any commercial opportunity is never “Is there money to be made?” but “Is this godly? Will it offend the law of God?” Only after that check do you discuss the business. The secular world scoffs at that order — just as, when Jesus called money “the unrighteous mammon” and told the people of this world who know how to use money for their own advantage to use it instead to lay up treasure in heaven, “the Pharisees also, who were covetous… derided him.” Yet many in this very trade bear Christian names, worship in churches, even form Christian fellowships in the markets — and then go back and do this. It tells us so much about our culture: as the Lord said, “This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”
The critic’s wisdom point is valid — “do you not know you are harming not only others but yourselves?” — but it is not the first or deepest point. Do you not also know you are offending God, who said He will require an accounting for every life taken, for every drop of blood? Do you not know that it matters nothing what offering you bring to church, or what good you do in the community, if you build your city on blood? Whatever gift you think you are giving to God out of blood money is not acceptable to Him. So the critic got many things right, but the main thrust wrong — and anyone who engages a serious matter on an ethnic basis risks pulling attention away from the real issue toward something merely divisive; this morning people are arguing “it’s not an Igbo problem, the DG is Yoruba, what about the Hausas, the Chinese” — when we should be condemning the thing itself and asking how policies and controls can be tightened to end it. And for those of us who think biblically, the church should be at the forefront — preaching what the Lord actually wants preached: righteousness, repentance, the reminder of God’s disgust with the wicked, that love must be shown in action. If that is what people heard every time they went to church — rather than how much to double their giving — consciences would not be lulled into silence. Nigeria was once blessed with a NAFDAC DG, the late Professor Dora Akunyili, who took the battle to the counterfeiters and achieved real success; we pray for more like her. And to the customs officer who looked the other way, the importer, the manufacturer, the seller, the neighbour who said nothing, the compromised official, the doctor or hospital profiting from it — remember: for every drop of blood, God will require an accounting, and it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
ON SOMETHING WORSE THAN UNFORGIVENESS
Next, a story published on the Linda Ikeji blog, which I cannot verify, but whose comments set me thinking. The blog reports a Nigerian man’s account that his Australia-based friend, from Oka in Anambra, battled a mysterious illness for over five years until it was discovered that his wife had been slowly poisoning him — grinding glass and metal springs into his food whenever he returned to Nigeria. He visited the best hospitals and nothing was found, until (as the account goes) inquiry pointed to the wife and her boyfriend; the man installed hidden cameras and gathered the evidence. He shared it, the blog says, in response to a woman online who had suggested that women should simply poison cheating husbands.
I raise it not for the lurid details, which we cannot confirm, but for how people reacted — because from a purely human-wisdom angle, the answers keep falling short. One wrote: knowing people are raised differently and can react terribly, I now treat everyone as I would want to be treated. A fine sentiment — but it is no protection from a wicked world. You may rightly resolve never to give offence, out of the fear of God — but you cannot proceed as if “I’ll avoid being harmed by never offending anyone” were a shield, because a person who decides to poison a spouse may do it not over an offence at all, but from sheer selfish desire to be rid of them — as we saw only weeks ago in the American worship leader who killed his wife to be with another woman. Another said: men, learn to cook and eat only what you cook; another: don’t marry at all, “all the married men I know are miserable”; another, in capitals: learn to eat together. But do you think one determined to poison you won’t find another way if you eat from the same bowl? Do you think the unmarried are safe — have you never heard of partners, or business associates, poisoning one another? All manner of evil arises from every manner of circumstance in a fallen world.
And it is chilling how normalised the fear has become. At a gathering of Christian men recently, a senior friend told me that he and others at the empty-nest stage counsel one another to be careful now that it is just husband and wife in the house — don’t be too harsh, give her all the space she wants — “because, you know, she could just get rid of you.” I was stunned. So a husband’s accommodation of his wife is driven by a secret fear of being poisoned? That must never be named among those of us on the Lord’s side; I pray no one looks at a spouse and thinks, “I’d better mind how I behave around him, or her — who knows what they’d do if hurt?”
So let me ask the question this story forces: what is worse than not forgiving the one who hurt you? Not forgiving is itself grievous — the Lord said that if we do not forgive others, He will not forgive us, and our communion with Him is broken. But there is something worse: pretending to have forgiven while harbouring a plan for revenge. That the woman online could calmly counsel, “wait, and poison them” — imagine the evil lurking in such a heart. In a fallen world you have no idea what evil lies in the corners of other hearts: “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” The man who says, “To protect myself I’ll never hurt anyone,” deceives himself; the heart’s inclination is evil, and only the Holy Spirit moderates it. Which reminds us again of the wisdom of not being unequally yoked with an unbeliever.
For those on the Lord’s side, it ought not to be so. “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” The secular world says revenge is a dish best served cold — pretend all is well, hide your anger, and strike at the opportune time; our Lord says, “with you it shall not be so.” And note: if the hurt is adultery, the Bible plainly permits you to walk out of that marriage — our Lord Himself allowed it. The cross calls us to forgive all wrongs as far as we can, even adultery; but if you cannot, you may leave. So why stay in a marriage only to hurt, poison, or kill the one who offended you? If you cannot forgive, say so — let it be known to the one who wronged you that you were hurt, and ask the Lord for grace to truly forgive. But do not pretend forgiveness while mapping out vengeance. That is a detestable evil before the Lord, and it must not be named among the children of God. The answer, in the end, is never “cook your own food,” or “don’t marry,” or “eat together.” The answer is Jesus Christ — the answer to the questions of yesterday, of today, and of every age.
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