The following are the views expressed by Olufemi Oguntokun in the June 1, 2026 episode of the On the Lord’s Side Podcast — Christian perspectives on news and current events.
ON THE OGBOMOSHO SCHOOL KIDNAPPINGS AND THE HOSTAGE CRISIS IN OYO STATE
This is perhaps a video many of you have already seen — I am referring to the video said to feature the voice and image of the principal of one of the schools raided by bandits and kidnappers in OGBOMOSHO, southwest Nigeria, about three weeks ago. We are all horrified by the realization that these children and these teachers remain in captivity three weeks after the fact. One of them, we know for certain, has been killed — because the killing was recorded on video and shared massively. And they are still there.
I do hope you are still praying for them. I do hope that you are not carrying on as if all is well, because as things stand in Nigeria right now, we cannot afford to. In all our churches, we should be praying for them. In our private prayers, we should be praying for them. In our family devotions, we should be praying for them.
In the video, the principal pleads directly with the authorities: if any of the soldiers come into the bush again, please — they are begging in the name of God — do not use force. She reports that one of the captives has already been singled out for execution as a reprisal for the military intervention. She is pleading with the government to negotiate, not to attempt a rescue by force.
This is exactly the modus operandi of criminals, of bandits, of kidnappers — they never want the government to come in by force of arms. That is precisely why they take people in the first place. You take hostages, not to keep them forever, but to use them as leverage in negotiations. And what do you think these bandits are negotiating for? Money, primarily — and who knows what else after that.
This brings me back to an ancient wisdom that every sane, decent government understands: prevention is better than cure. You want to have security in your neighborhoods and within your borders so that these nefarious elements cannot operate in the first place. Because once it becomes a hostage situation, the options for government become extremely limited. On the one hand, any government official would rightly want the credit of having these students and teachers returned home safely. On the other hand, the terrorists know this too. They know the government wants to be applauded for a peaceful resolution, and so they use that knowledge as their own weapon: “You dare not come at us by force of arms. You dare not swoop on us. Otherwise, we will kill them.” And if they were to kill the children and the teachers, it would reflect catastrophically on those in government and on the nation as a whole.
That is exactly why deterrence — prevention — is the most critical thing. Once there is a hostage situation, everything becomes delicate, frustrating, and limited.
ON THE OYO STATE GOVERNOR’S VISIT AND NIGERIA’S CONSTITUTIONAL SECURITY CRISIS
The Governor of Oyo State visited the affected communities, as he should. But I want to draw your attention to something he said prior to the visit — that he is practically helpless. And if you understand the constitutional framework of Nigeria, you will appreciate what he means. Nigeria is called a federal republic, but it is federal in name only, to a large extent. In the ultimate sense, it is the President of the Republic who controls the security architecture across every corner of Nigeria. The President is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, and he also controls the police force of the entire nation.
State governors do not control any police force. In recent years, because of the obvious failures and incapacity of the Nigerian police, many governors have been forced to establish some form of vigilante groups — but these are just that; they are not full-fledged security forces. And as things stand today, state police forces are neither legal nor constitutional in Nigeria. The President has said he would support state police, but those remain just words, and we have not seen any concrete action yet.
So the Governor visited the area. He met with stakeholders, with community members, and with the parents whose children remain in the hands of the captors. And I am sure you do not even want to begin to count what those parents are passing through. You do not want to imagine the pain in their hearts, the horrors they are living with daily. So you must not be surprised by the anguish you could hear in the voice of one woman who took the microphone to address the Governor — a grandmother who has four grandchildren among those kidnapped, along with her daughter-in-law, a young mother who has been seen in videos caring for an infant while in captivity.
This woman prayed over the Governor in Yoruba — a profoundly deep prayer, asking that the Lord would not take from him the things of honour that serve as his covering — and then she cried out on behalf of the hundreds of parents in the same agonizing position: “Please help us. Please have mercy upon us.”
This is what desperation does. Helpless parents. Helpless grandparents. Helpless spouses. Helpless children. All crying out to a helpless governor. And the governor, himself helpless, crying out toward a federal government that holds all the cards. Helpless citizens crying out to a helpless government. And in the case of a government that does have the power and the resources to go after these bandits — what we find instead is complicity. That is exactly where we are.
ON THE MONEY TRAIL: RANSOM PAYMENTS AND THE QUESTION OF COMPLICITY
The captive principal’s video message carries one central demand from her captors: do not use force — come and negotiate. And when they say “negotiate,” we all know what they mean. Money.
Which leads me to a video segment from Arise News, the caption of which states: Total ransom paid in three years of the Tinubu government is two trillion naira. Think about that. Two trillion naira. And I have also read a report from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics showing that between a certain base year and 2024, the total amount of ransom paid is approximately 22 trillion naira — which actually exceeded the security budget for the same period, which stood at around 16 trillion naira.
So the military security budget over three years: approximately 16 trillion naira. Total ransom paid to bandits and kidnappers: 2 to 22 trillion naira, depending on your source. These numbers should shake us.
Now, Americans have a saying: follow the money. Whenever you find yourself confounded by any situation, by any act of criminality, by any deviation from the norm, and you are trying to figure out what is at the root of it — follow the money. Ask yourself: who is making money out of this? Once you answer that question, you are going to know exactly what is happening and what needs to be done.
And here is the critical point: we are not talking about small sums. We are not talking about a few hundred thousand naira moved in a bag. We are talking about sums in the range of trillions. Nobody should try to tell us that it is impossible to trace the ultimate beneficiaries of these transactions. These are sums that cannot all be moved physically. There are many people on record — relatives of those released from captivity — who have confirmed that they made bank transfers to these bandits. If transfers are being made, there are bank accounts receiving those transfers. There are banks facilitating those transfers. And nobody opens a bank account without KYC — Know Your Customer — information stored with the banks. That would be a starting point for any serious government investigation.
Now, think about it this way. If indeed the government has been paying ransom — and credible evidence points to this — a right-thinking government would take steps to arrest these bandits and bring an end to it. The only scenario in which a government would be comfortable continually paying ransom to these people is one in which those in government are themselves also benefiting. That is what many Nigerians suspect, and I genuinely hope it is not the case. But even as I say that, I remind myself: do not be naive. Be realistic about the corruption in this country.
ON THE NIGERIAN UNION OF TEACHERS’ INDEFINITE STRIKE
The Nigerian Union of Teachers in Oyo State has declared an indefinite strike, directing all public primary and secondary school teachers to stop work from today, June 1, 2026, until the abducted teachers and pupils are returned. The directive comes in the context of growing safety concerns after 46 pupils and their teachers were abducted by suspected terrorists in the Urire Local Government Area.
This was long expected, and I appreciate that it was not a rushed or knee-jerk decision. The NUT had earlier declared a day of prayers and fasting — many people applauded that; others laughed and said it was not enough. I believe prayer was absolutely the first and right thing to do, but going forward, more was needed. And this strike is a step in the right direction.
The logic is simple: if two or three schools among the thousands in Oyo State were attacked, and those taken are still in captivity three weeks later, what guarantee is there that the same bandits will not attack another school? The NUT is saying: we will not send teachers and students into an environment where their safety cannot be guaranteed. It is sad that many students will now be out of school, but I hope this adds urgency and pressure on the government to act decisively.
ON THE FOREST GUARDS INITIATIVE AND THE NEED FOR DIVINE INTERVENTION
There are reports that President Tinubu has approved the recruitment of 1,000 forest guards in Oyo State. As a deterrence measure, this could help prevent these bandits from continuing to use the forests as their base of operations. But, as they say, the devil is in the details. Who exactly are going to be recruited? We must hope that in the process of recruitment, some of the very bandits are not employed as the guards — which would, of course, completely defeat the purpose.
I continue to pray for those children and those men and women who remain in captivity — not only those from Oyo State, but across every nook and cranny of Nigeria. The Lord Himself will bring them out.
And I want to say this clearly: when you critically examine the totality of this situation — the helpless families, the helpless governor, the federal government that has both the resources and the constitutional authority to act but seems more complicit than committed — you are driven to one conclusion. What we need, essentially and urgently, is to cry out to God and pray to Him for the deliverance of this country. Even the most rigorous policy analysis eventually beats us to that place. We need divine intervention in Nigeria. All of us who are Christians must be aware of this, and we must play our part in begging God to bring it about.
ON CANADA’S EXPANDING EUTHANASIA PROGRAMME
Finally, a news item from Canada that illustrates the direction in which a culture can drift when it loses its moral bearings.
CBN News reports that Canadian citizens are expressing outrage after a woman who sought medical attention for back pain was offered euthanasia before she was ever diagnosed or tested. The hospital staff immediately offered to help kill her. Let that sink in: a woman walks in with back pain, and before any diagnosis, before any investigation, the first thing on offer is death.
A Member of Parliament, Tamara Jensen, has cited the story of Miriam Lancaster as proof that Canada needs to stop expanding its Medical Assistance in Dying programme — known by the acronym MAID. According to MP Jensen, Canada is set to expand MAID in 2027 to include what many are now calling psychiatric euthanasia — that is, offering assisted death to people with mental illness alone, including conditions such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
Canadians are asking a simple but devastating question: Are we offering death before we can offer care?
Let me say this plainly. Medicine was never meant to assist dying — it was meant to prevent death. The Hippocratic tradition that doctors subscribe to at the point of their professional swearing-in commits them to doing everything to promote life. But now we find that tradition inverted: medicine is being redefined to mean you can also assist people in dying.
And we have seen this movie before. It was once said that MAID would be strictly limited to chronic illnesses, to cases of intractable physical pain that cannot be addressed by medication or surgery. But this is the nature of a slippery slope: once you take one step down, you must take another to stabilize yourself, and then another, and another. Those who invited you onto the slope knew exactly where they wanted you to end up — at the bottom of the pit. They just could not tell you that at the start, because you never would have agreed to go. So they said, “Just one step. Just for this special case. We will limit it to this.” And look where we are now: doctors prescribing euthanasia for back pain.
Now they want to extend it to mental illness — anxiety, depression, PTSD. But these are conditions that have known, effective treatments. There is an antidote for anxiety in the Bible. There is counsel for depression in the Scriptures. These are clinical and psychological conditions that have been addressed through therapy and appropriate treatment. To say, instead, that we should offer such a person death is morally catastrophic.
For those of us who are not in Canada or the West, we must still pay attention — because these arguments will find their way here too. When they do, we must be ready to counter them: on medical grounds (effective treatments exist), on economic grounds (the cost of care is not so prohibitive as to justify killing), and most fundamentally, on theological grounds.
A culture that is obsessed with death — whether through abortion or through assisted dying — is a culture operating under a very specific influence. That influence is the devil, whose mission is to steal, to kill, and to destroy. Wherever you find a culture that honours God through Christ, that culture values life and works to preserve it, because life is precious to God. The Noahic covenant makes this clear: God said He would demand an accounting for every bloodshed. Life is that precious to Him. He created it. Anything He has created is precious to Him.
So here is a simple rule of thumb: when faced with a choice between something that preserves life and something that ends it, the one that preserves life is godly. The one that says “this life must end” is not of God.
The medical profession should be in the business of helping people live — helping them overcome their situations, overcome their illnesses, and regain their health. Not to bring death. Those who started down this road by saying it would be limited to a narrow set of cases should now look at where their logic has led: to doctors prescribing euthanasia before even running a diagnostic test.
Ultimately, a society prospers when those who govern it, and those who serve it — the doctors, the lawyers, the nurses, the accountants, everyone — know the Lord. That is why, as Christians, we must take seriously the Great Commission: to go into all the world and make disciples of all men. That is not just our spiritual duty. It is the most practical solution to the problems destroying our societies — in Nigeria, in Canada, and everywhere else.
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