The following are the views expressed by Olufemi Oguntokun in the June 11, 2026 episode of the On the Lord’s Side Podcast – Christian perspectives on news and current events.
ON YOUNG GIRLS SELLING THEIR OVA TO BUY EXPENSIVE PHONES
I want to begin this morning by engaging with a story that should give us some concern. It is not something we have not heard before. It is not something that has not happened before. Nothing is new under the heavens — so the Bible tells us, and so real-life experience says to us. But this deserves our consideration and reflection.
I am reading from Linda Ikeji’s blog. It says: young girls in Plateau are selling their eggs to a fertility clinic to buy expensive phones.
The Plateau State Agenda and Equal Opportunity Commission has alleged that young girls in the state are selling their egg cells to a fertility clinic, and claimed the practice is rampant among women, including tertiary students. The head of the commission’s information unit, Mrs. Dong , disclosed this during a Hausa-language programme on Unity FM Jos on Tuesday, June 9, 2026. She described the practice as exploitative and as gender-based violence.
This is the substance of what she said: people who want children go to this facility and are charged higher fees, while young girls now sell their ova to buy expensive phones or to fund their lifestyles. If they remove your ovum, she said, they give you either ₦120,000 or ₦150,000. The commission, she added, has begun an awareness campaign in communities and schools. They are going to meet the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Jos on the matter; they have already spoken to the Rector of the Polytechnic at Barkin Ladi, and to the College of Education and the University of Education in Pankshin . She called on parents and other stakeholders to monitor the movement of their female children, blaming poor upbringing for the rising cases of sexual and gender-based violence in various communities.
Well, that is the story. If it does not shock you, it should at least make you concerned — and it should be shocking, really. Not that we have never heard of people selling body parts, trading in body parts for pecuniary gain, but that every time we come across stories like this, we have to reflect again on too many things.
First, on the folly that attaches to us as broken and fallen human beings generally. And then on the extent to which human beings will go for money. And here I am not speaking only of the girls said to be selling their body parts, but also of the facilities — the so-called clinics — who have set up business along these lines.
This is one of the points that conservative Christians make about reproductive technology. To be very clear: if a baby results from any process, it is to the glory of God, and that baby bears the image of God. There is something concerning, however, where pecuniary gain is attached to the process. That is why you find many conservative Christians so cold towards embracing practices such as surrogacy, commercial surrogacy, and any commercial exploitation of the reproductive process. Because money is money, and you know what money does: it invites you to be as callous as possible. Once you look at things only from the monetary angle, abuses creep in, and people begin to say, “Well, as long as the person gets paid.” But that is not really the point I want to make this morning.
Look at the exchange that is being made. According to the lady who spoke on that radio programme, these young girls were selling their eggs to do what? To buy expensive phones. You will agree with me that the story would read differently if we were told of people in desperate need — in abject poverty, who could not afford a meal, who had no roof over their heads, who were desperately ill, or who needed money to care for a desperately ill child or parent. You would pause and say, this is desperation; if you were in that person’s shoes, what would you do? But what we are being told here is that these are not desperate people. These young girls are parting with a part of their body to buy expensive phones.
That says a lot about the trajectory of the culture, and about the wisdom that is clearly lacking in many of us today. As someone put it, this story highlights a profound lack of foresight and discernment — and I fully agree. Young women are trading a part of their reproductive health for short-term material gain. Wisdom literature in the Bible repeatedly contrasts the pursuit of fleeting pleasures or status symbols with long-term well-being, integrity, and an understanding of consequences. It is, in the end, a failure to understand consequences.
Some medical experts will say, “Oh, you can do away with it; it is a certain body part, you will be fine.” But there will be consequences. Even if I am not a medical expert, I can proceed on this basis: if you were created with a number of body parts and you were to lose any, you might be able to survive, but you would not be complete. So where you part with a body part and there are justifiable grounds — and you know such instances so well — that must be reckoned a sacrifice. But to be told that it does not matter at all, that it will have no consequence for your well-being, cannot be true. If that were the case, why were you created with two instead of one, with three instead of two? You may still survive and live productively, yes; but where you were created with two and it is reduced to one, there will be some consequences. And of course I exclude those instances where the donation of a body organ is itself the path of wisdom, the path of love.
I did some searching on this. You find that when people part with their ova in this way, yes, they may survive and even live a productive life, but sometimes they suffer hormonal imbalances. There can be ovarian damage — because the person harvesting the organ is probably someone who does not want his actions discovered, who is in a hurry, who does it under cloak and dagger. There can be infections, future fertility issues, an emotional toll, and the ethical implications of commodifying one’s own body. It is a very sad thing that this is where many of our young people are.
And the body is important to God. In 1 Corinthians 6, the Holy Spirit is not even speaking of our spirit, our soul, our heart — important as those are to the Lord — but of the body: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” So from a Christian perspective, to part with any body part must be done circumspectly, only where it is godly and glorifies God. Glorify God, even in your body.
When Christians talk about tattoos, or “can I do this to my body, can I do that,” we are not always asking, “Is it a sin or not?” For a Bible-believing Christian, the question is: does it glorify God? And we proceed from this first basis — that you are not your own, that the body does not belong to you. This is contrary to what the culture teaches. The culture teaches the autonomy of self: you own yourself, you own your body, you can do with it what you will. That is not the Christian perspective. That is not the biblical position. So you ask, first and foremost: this body does not belong to me; should I do this; will it glorify the One who owns it? And as for selling eggs for pecuniary gain — well, I look forward to anyone putting forward an argument that it glorifies God.
This reminds us of the materialism in the culture, does it not? Some people look around and say, “I want to have an expensive phone too. What can I do to get one?” Imagine: the person ready to undergo so delicate a medical process to have her ovum harvested, just to buy an expensive phone, is the very person who would do something even more desperate, even more dastardly. This points to a materialism that is the bane of Nigerian culture, where many have said you are judged by how much you have — by things, by money. That is one of the reasons we are where we are. As long as there is money to be made, a policeman will do it; a diplomat will look the other way; a top military officer will become complicit in some security breach; and, unfortunately, people in government too will compromise — because there is money to be made.
No one can serve two masters; Jesus reminded us of that in Matthew 6:24. You will either hate the one and love the other. A materialistic society — one that judges everything by pecuniary gain — cannot be a godly society. It does not mean you cannot have both; it means you cannot serve both. You can have God and have money, and that is a beautiful place to be — but money must know that it is not your master, that God is the master, so that if at any point one must give way to the other, it is money that gives way to God.
But we must end on a note of hope. What does the Word say to us who are on the Lord’s side — those who, all glory to God, have been made wise by the power of the Holy Spirit and the treasures in the Word of God? Those of us made wise will not part with our body parts for pecuniary gain, whether for expensive phones or even for estates and lands. And it is a reminder that there are many who are not yet so wise, and that the work of evangelism must proceed with dispatch. This is not limited to Plateau State; you will recall a story in the past concerning female students of the University of Abuja as well. The sad reality is that most of these girls — and the boys who do similarly awful things for money — attend churches. Perhaps they are members of the choir. But their hearts remain materialistic, desirous of the things society values.
I remember the part in Pilgrim’s Progress, Part One, when Christian and Faithful arrived at Vanity Fair. So many things were on sale there, and John Bunyan made clear that the people of the fair were shocked, because the two of them would not buy anything. “What will you buy?” they were asked. “We have nothing to buy from this fair,” they replied. I pray the Lord will raise up for us Christians like Christian and Faithful, who say to the things on sale at Vanity Fair: no, we are not going to buy from you. All the good things we want, we will look to God for, for all good things come from heaven above.
This is, primarily, a call to compassion. It is not for us to stand here on the Lord’s side, point at them, and say, “How foolish.” That is not what we are called to do. Jesus Himself, in John 3:17, did not come to condemn the world; we have been given not the ministry of condemnation but the ministry of reconciliation. So we should be sad. These stories should remind us of the importance of discernment. We should support the awareness campaign that lady spoke about — but for us this is even more far-reaching than mere awareness about the dangers of selling body parts. It is about the importance of godly wisdom. And godly wisdom comes from where? From knowing Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
I trust you are not going to part with your body part to buy a mobile phone. But if there is still one lady, one young man, one person in this society who would, we should feel sad, feel concerned, pray for them, and — whenever we have the opportunity — speak up. Ours is an evangelical faith; you cannot be a Christian and not speak about it. It is part of the bundle; it is what makes you a Christian. You may not have a pulpit or a congregation to preach to, but you have that person in your office, that person in your school; you have your child, your spouse, your friend, your neighbour. We must start where we are. Let no one be heard idly saying there is nobody to preach to. If there is only one young man or one young lady you can influence for the Lord, you will get to heaven and find stars in your crown for that one person.
ON THE APOSTLE SENTENCED TO 49 YEARS FOR RAPING HIS DAUGHTER
Next I turn to this story: a court has sentenced an Akwa Ibom pastor to 49 years’ imprisonment for raping and impregnating his teenage daughter.
One reason I bring this up is not that we have never heard of horrible things done by people who put themselves forward as pastors, but that this is a case that has been concluded. Oftentimes we hear of accusations and allegations — pastor accused of this, person accused of that. This is a man who has been found guilty. I am conversant with the criminal law system, and I know what must have gone into the process leading to a conviction: evidence must have been paraded, and the opportunity to dispute it must have been given to the accused. So when a court reaches a conclusion like this, you can confidently proceed on the basis that it truly happened.
The story says an Akwa Ibom State High Court sitting in Uyo has sentenced the pastor — Apostle William Okon Bassey — to 49 years’ imprisonment for raping and impregnating his teenage daughter. Honourable Justice Bassey delivered the judgment on Wednesday, June 10, 2026.
Let me pause. This is a very important story, one we should approach with all seriousness — but permit me a comment on a lighter note. Did you hear the name of the accused? And the name of the judge who delivered the judgment, Honourable Justice Bassey? You can be sure they are not related at all. It simply reflects how ubiquitous that name is in that part of Nigeria; everywhere you turn, you find a Bassey.
It reminds me of something from our days at the Law School, where people from different law faculties — and even from other parts of the world — come together for that one-year programme. In the first few weeks, you are meeting new people. “What’s your name?” When I told someone my name was Femi, he said, “Ah, Femi on this campus is like calling Sule in Ilorin” If you went to a market in Ilorin and simply shouted “Sule,” he joked, hundreds of faces would look up and ask, “Are you calling me?” He must have met so many Femis at the Law School in his time. But that is on a lighter note.
Here we have an apostle sentenced to 49 years for raping and impregnating his daughter. He is said to be of the Mount Zion Lighthouse Full Gospel Church. He was arrested at his residence on November 7, 2019. Again, let us pause: arrested in 2019, the trial concluded in 2026 — almost seven years. That says a lot about our criminal justice system, that it runs too slowly. The principle, of course, is that the wheels of justice grind slowly but surely; you want to be sure you have dotted your I’s and crossed your T’s. But that is no excuse for trials of such length.
According to the story, the victim revealed that her father began having sexual intercourse with her at the age of 13. This is something we have heard about over and over again — fathers committing such wicked, unlawful acts against their daughters — and many say it is more common than we may even know. I pray for our ladies traumatised by such evil, that the Lord will heal them indeed, heal them so completely that they still live fulfilling lives. And I pray that all the men doing such evil — and the women too, for we understand that some women abuse young boys — will be exposed for who they are; that the Holy Spirit will arrest them, convict them of their sins, and bring them to repentance, and that those who remain obstinate will be exposed and brought to judgment in the name of Jesus.
The story adds that the continuous assault led her to become pregnant on three different occasions, and that the pregnancies were terminated by her mother — complicity by the mother too. She also said her father always demanded sex from her before paying her school fees or meeting her needs.
Now, the reason I bring up this story: sometimes you hear of a Christian, or even a Christian leader, making one error or another. And errors are there; we all make mistakes. We are all in the flesh — even the most highly ranked Christian leader is still someone in the flesh. The Bible teaches us: “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” So no one can say, “I have been this long on the Lord’s side, I am this high in the church, I can do no wrong.” That is foolishness.
My father used to say a Yoruba proverb to this effect — I know I have told this story before, but permit me to tell it again. My father once had an uncle, a colourful man, much older than he was. But my father started pastoring from a very young age, and the regard people give to pastors and servants of God, his uncles also gave to him. The uncle had a dispute with his own wife — something to do, I think, with an affair, though I am not sure. My father went to him and said, in essence: “Uncle, what you have done is wrong; it is disgraceful; it is not expected.” And the uncle looked at him and said, “Oh, you think you are better than us? For as long as you are alive, you are prone to making mistakes.” He was saying, “Look, maybe I made a mistake, but don’t look at me as though I am a fool who should never have stumbled; as long as you are alive, you could make a mistake.” That is exactly what the Bible teaches — “let him take heed lest he fall.” My father said it became his mantra all his life, and a prayer point throughout his ministry, because as long as we are in this flesh there is the risk of falling.
But there are errors and there are errors; there are falls and there are falls. And this is the point I want to make: this is not that kind of instance. This is not a case where a man can say, “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” This is the case of a man who was having sexual intercourse with his own daughter beginning at age 13, who got her pregnant on at least three occasions with the pregnancies terminated, who — according to the daughter — would not pay her school fees until he had had sex with her. That is not a case of “a good man fell.” That is not “a Christian made an error.” This is wickedness. This is evil — pure evil — and it must be called by its name. Even if someone tried to say “the first one was a mistake,” I would never agree. That is evil.
There are sins and there are grievous sins. You may say to me that all sins are grievous, that all will be punished unless repented of and washed in the blood of Jesus — and you would be right. But let us not flatten all sins into a false equivalence. There are some sins that are pure evil, and this is one of them. The word for this is rape. A man who slept with his 13-year-old daughter — and even if she had been 25 — that is still rape. A man who would not pay his daughter’s school fees until he had sex with her is an evil man. And the sad thing is that this man, despite being this wicked, would continue to parade himself as a pastor.
According to the confession tabled before the court, the man’s own account made plain that he initiated the abuse, that he took the girl to her mother in Eket when she became pregnant, that the mother arranged the termination, and that he continued the abuse — leading to a second and then a third pregnancy, with the mother again arranging an abortion. So you can see there is a network here of the guilty, of the complicit: the man, of course, at the top, but also the mother, and then the doctors conducting those abortions. The mother should be put on trial for something as well.
The overarching point is this: we should not treat this as “a Christian man fell,” “a pastor sinned.” No. This is the case of an evil person cloaking himself in the garment of righteousness, in the garment of priesthood. And this should humble many of us on the Lord’s side, because it has been observed that the more evil a person is at heart, the more that person desires a cover for the evil — which is exactly why those of us on the Lord’s side must be discerning, must test the spirits, must pray for discernment every time. Evil, by its nature, always desires a cover, because nobody sees evil for what it is and embraces it.
God has put in us what we might call a smell test. You do not want to associate with evil; you want to run from it. It is like putting food that has gone bad to your nose, or holding a drink that has turned: even without tasting it, you can tell something is wrong. If you saw maggots in your food, you would know not to put it in your mouth. God created our senses to warn us — and the same is true with evil. The evil person knows that if he presented himself plainly as evil, you would run. So let us bear in mind that evil always wants a cup, a cover. And that, unfortunately, is why some of the most egregious evil acts are found among those who identify as Christians — I will not say among Christians, but among those who identify as such — because evil people always desire that cover.
I ask myself: if you are so evil as to have intercourse with your 13- or 16-year-old daughter, to get her pregnant and terminate the pregnancies and continue in the act, what is your business being an apostle, a Christian, a pastor? This underscores the need for greater scrutiny of those who hold themselves out as representatives of God — and no one who truly holds himself out as God’s representative should have any qualms about scrutiny. As Christians, we cannot prize discernment too highly. In fact, if people say you are “too cautious” about such things, that is a good thing. Always ask: does this person’s life align with their claims — in their family, their church, their community?
On this one, I pray the Lord will heal that girl. I do not know how old she is now. If it began when she was 16 and was discovered in 2019 — and this is 2026 — and if it had gone on for some years before, she may well be in her late twenties or her thirties now. That is the kind of trauma a person could carry for life, unless fully made whole. I pray for her, and for the many — girls and boys, women and men — who carry the scars of this kind of evil, that the Lord will bring them to Himself and heal them in full, in the name of Jesus. And I pray the Lord will expose evil people doing these things, whether or not they put themselves forward as Christians, and especially those who use their membership of the Lord’s side as a cloak for their wickedness. May He give us the spirit of discernment to identify them, so we are not led astray. There are many who have entered the homes of so-called Christians and been assaulted and defiled. I pray it will never be said of you or of me that we used our membership of the Lord’s side as a cloak to disguise the evil in us. Those people have no place among us. And for those who have come to genuine repentance, we pray the Lord will receive them and help them make amends. Amen.
So we began with the young girls in Plateau State, cautioning ourselves that they are everywhere in the country, parting with their body parts to fund a lifestyle of expensive phones. Now we are speaking of people who identify with the Lord, who from the outside world are seen as churchgoers, even as Christian leaders. We therefore have a work cut out for us: a work of evangelism toward the young people selling their body parts for materialistic lifestyles, and a work of discernment, because this second story reminds us that among us are wolves — as Jesus said — cloaked in the garment of righteousness. And note: He did not merely call them wolves; He called them ravenous wolves. A wolf, by definition, wants to attack and kill; but a ravenous wolf is a hungry, angry one. That is how Jesus described them. I pray the Lord will protect us and our congregations from those wolves, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
ON PRISON ESCAPES AND THE JUDGMENT NO ONE WILL ESCAPE
I came across this story this morning: police have launched a manhunt after a Nigerian man escaped from a prison van in London. We have here a Nigerian man, we have London, and we have an escape.
I do not know what first drew me to this story, but it set me thinking about something I had been noticing: it seems there are just too many stories of people getting out of prison in the UK these days. So I consulted an AI platform and asked whether there had been a rise in prisoners escaping prison facilities in the UK. According to the response — citing a gov.uk source — actual physical escapes from UK prisons remain very rare, but there has been a significant rise in the number of prisoners released in error. And that fits, because the recent stories I had seen related to prisoners mistakenly released. “Mistakenly released in error” — that should make anyone pause and ask: what is wrong with the system? How can it be that prisoners are mistakenly released? Who is running these facilities? Something must be wrong.
This particular case, though, is not a release in error. This is a man who escaped from a prison van in southeast London. He was last seen around Woolwich High Street at about 6:40 p.m. on Monday, after absconding from a prison transport while being taken from a magistrates’ court to HMP Thameside, having assaulted a guard. The private contractor — — confirmed it was transporting the prisoner and said the matter was being investigated. So the prisoner escaped from the custody of a private contractor moving him from one point to another. We cannot speculate on what happened there, but things do happen.
Let us reflect on this. The same AI platform reported figures worth weighing — and I cite them as I received them. It said there were 12 recorded escapes from prison establishments in England and Wales in the 12 months to 2025, up slightly from nine the previous year. As for releases in error: a record 262 prisoners were released by mistake in England and Wales between 2024 and 2025 — a 128% increase on the 115 released in error in the previous 12 months. There were also 863 failures relating to the temporary release programme in 2024–2025. The surge in mistaken releases, the platform said, has been heavily scrutinised, with critics linking the errors to unprecedented systemic overcrowding and to the emergency early-release policies introduced to ease capacity.
I then asked: what is the most daring prison escape? The answer given was the 1983 Maze Prison escape in Northern Ireland. On 25 September 1983, 38 Irish Republican Army prisoners took control of H-Block 7 by smuggling in guns and knives. Her Majesty’s Prison Maze was considered one of the most escape-proof prisons in Europe, with 15-foot concrete walls and steel gates. The breakout involved hostage-taking: the prisoners held several guards hostage and took their uniforms to blend in, intercepted the prison’s food delivery truck, piled into the back, and forced the driver toward the main gate. When a guard raised the alarm at the final gate, a shootout broke out, with casualties and a chaotic sprint to freedom. It remains the largest prison escape in British history. If you want to explore more, there is the 1962 Alcatraz escape, and El Chapo’s high-tech tunnel escape — perhaps you have seen a film on either.
And I go through all of this because of the story of this young Nigerian man — , 25 years old — who escaped while being transported in the United Kingdom. That story has led us to comment on the significant rise in errors in the release of prisoners in the UK, which is a scandal of sorts, discussed even at Prime Minister’s Questions recently, and which should keep coming up.
But the reality in all of this is that sometimes prisoners escape from custody — not only in the UK. There are stories from Nigeria too; you will remember the jailbreaks in which Boko Haram terrorists escaped from a facility in Abuja, and there have been many such cases around the world. It is my prayer and hope that the man who has escaped will be apprehended, because escapees pose a danger: desperate not to be caught, they may continue in evil and would harm anyone who tries to expose them.
This is a time to realise that no matter how seemingly impregnable a prison is, people have always managed to escape — as that 1983 Maze escape shows; according to many sources, that prison was reckoned the most escape-proof in Europe at the time, and yet 38 prisoners got out. And if you know El Chapo’s escape, you know that when prisoners set their minds to it, they sometimes defy all the odds.
And so it is a time to remind the world of this: no one is going to escape God’s own judgment. Many scoffers make a mockery of the day of judgment. Some imagine that if they make themselves outstandingly wicked, God will look upon them in anger and, in His fury, fling them away — and they treat even that as a kind of escape. But there is no escaping it. However impregnable a man imagines his cover to be, however far he runs, the judgment of God is the one custody from which no one absconds. That is all the more reason to be on the Lord’s side now — to come to repentance, to receive His mercy, and to walk in His wisdom while it is still day.
