The following are the views expressed by Olufemi Oguntokun in the September 4, 2026 episode of the On the Lord’s Side Podcast — Christian perspectives on news and current events.
ON REST, SLEEP, AND A DEADLY 53-HOUR SHIFT
Good morning to you once again. It is Friday, the 4th of September 2026.
Have you come across the story of a Nigerian man in the United Kingdom, a taxi driver, recently jailed for killing another man because he fell asleep at the wheel after extreme working hours? One platform put it as a “micro-sleep” — about ten seconds — and in those ten seconds he crashed into a man who was parked on the road and killed him. The driver, Kolawole Erukulu, 45, a taxi driver in southeast London who holds joint British and Nigerian nationality, fell into that micro-sleep. The victim, Philip Bray, 59, had parked safely in a lay-by and was opening the driver’s door of his Volkswagen to get back in when Erukulu crashed into him. It was discovered afterwards that Erukulu had driven roughly 53 hours across three days before the collision, and his longest rest in that period was seven hours; further investigation found he usually took only breaks of four and two hours. You have to hold your head and imagine what fatigue must have taken hold of him. In court he pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving; he has been disqualified from driving for eight years, must pass an extended retest before holding a licence again, and has been sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.
There are many aspects to this. First, the victim, Philip Bray, 59, whose life was cut short by careless negligence — a careless refusal to sleep. We extend our sympathies to his family. His partner called him a sweet, gentle and caring man, her soulmate, describing his daily check-in calls and the enormous void his death has left; his sister described him as dependable and steady, the sort of person people could rely on without hesitation. Actions have consequences. The judge who presided said the footage showed the defendant was extremely tired and, in his view, continued to drive when he must have known that all this could have been stopped had he slept. He must have known he was tired — I think we can all agree — and if you have ever been in that situation, driving while exhausted, you know how dangerous it is. Because fatigue is something you cannot help; there are biological processes we cannot help as human beings — when you are truly pressed to empty your bowels, or when you are extremely tired, you cannot help falling into sleep, or into that two, three, ten seconds of micro-sleep before you catch yourself. The detective who investigated, Inspector Rob Baldwin, put it bluntly: Mr. Erukulu had worked long hours with insufficient rest; fatigue can seriously impair a driver’s ability to remain alert and react safely; anyone who feels tired should not continue driving, as the consequences can be devastating.
And I think that is the first lesson for us all — whether you are a driver, a factory worker, a lawyer working on a brief, a pastor, a parent, or a woman working in her kitchen or on her career: fatigue can seriously impair our ability to remain alert and to act safely. Anyone who feels tired should not continue — not just driving, but working. Take some steps back and rest. See what this man’s refusal has cost: it has cost another man his life; it has cost a partner her soulmate, perhaps children their father, parents their son, a church its loved one.
There are things we do not know about this story — why he was driving those long hours; whether he was in debt, pressured by an employer, or it was his own choice; who he was driving for; whether his family or employers knew. What we know is that he pleaded guilty — I suppose that, realising the gravity of what happened, he turned himself in and admitted his guilt. But here is something that should trouble us: driving 53 hours across three days is not, in itself, against the law. You would suppose there would be a law against that. But in Great Britain, taxi and private-hire drivers are not covered by the drivers’-hours rules that govern lorry drivers, who may not generally exceed roughly nine hours a day (extendable to ten twice a week, capped around 56 hours a week). And the best-known private-sector attempt has been Uber’s: from January 2018, a compulsory six-hour break after ten hours of on-trip time — once the system detects ten hours of driving, it cuts the driver off from booking further rides until he takes about a six-hour break. That policy also applied to Uber drivers in Nigeria at some point. These measures were put in place for a reason: in acknowledgement of the frailty of human beings, and of the dangers posed by those who refuse to rest — dangers not only to themselves, but to innocent third parties.
And you may think, “I’m not a driver — what danger could I pose to anyone?” We usually think of refusing rest only in terms of the danger to our own health. But there are dangers to third parties too: a doctor who refuses proper rest hurts his own health but could cause irreparable damage to patients; a teacher performs less optimally and could hurt students; the same for a pastor, a podcaster, for anyone. I hope this story, and the death of that innocent man, will lead lawmakers and policymakers to think along these lines — that if lorry and Uber drivers are limited for good reasons, so too should taxi and private-hire drivers be, and indeed drivers generally. This has brought home the wider ramifications of not giving the body rest. The reality is that we are made of clay; this body is not Superman.
So how do we engage this from a Christian perspective? We start from the point of rest. “Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your servant woman, and the stranger, may be refreshed” — that is from Exodus 23:12, given in the earliest days when the Lord brought His people out of Egypt and began building them into a nation. We must understand that although the Sabbath has a spiritual connotation, it was first a safety regulation. Why did the Lord say it? Because He made us; He knew what became of us when we fell in the garden. So He said, six days you shall work and on the seventh rest — not only so your animals working in the field may rest, but so your children and the stranger may be refreshed. It was, first of all, for the refreshing of the human body. And in Deuteronomy 5 He grounds the command: “Remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt.” He was reminding them of when the Egyptians used them as slaves — and slave drivers are people who will not let even the slave rest, working them until they drop dead. We must not become our own body’s slave drivers. Unfortunately, this man did.
Then go to Psalm 127:2. We do not know exactly why this man drove 53 hours without sleeping over three days — but your guess is as good as mine: a Nigerian immigrant in the UK, not driving for leisure but for work, trying to increase his income, perhaps because he was pressed financially. Psalm 127:2: “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, for so He gives His beloved sleep.” Now, this is not making light of real financial pressure, nor of those in the diaspora or in Nigeria who must work crazy hours to make ends meet — we empathise with you and pray the Lord will give you strength. We say this with understanding of people’s different circumstances. But even in the midst of it, remember that the Lord gives His beloved sleep. “The bread of sorrows” is the bread that costs more than it feeds you; not all provision is a blessing — when the provision comes at the cost of your health, or of others’ safety, it is the bread of sorrows. The Psalm does not say such income is wrong, or that it will not come; it says it is vain — futile — because ultimately it does not deliver what it promises. And the greater part is this: “He gives His beloved sleep.” Sleep is presented as a gift — to lie down knowing there will always be issues in this fallen world; there will always be worries, about your health or a loved one’s, about work not yet done, bills not yet paid. But if, in spite of all those worries, you can lie down and sleep, that is a gift from God.
Somebody says, “Femi, you don’t know what trouble I’m in, what bills I have to pay.” I may not, truly. But when it is time to sleep, let us learn to sleep — say to God, “Thank you; please give me rest, let me sleep” — and go to bed and sleep, and wake up and take it up again. My dad said to me, when I was about to marry, that one of the things you must learn as a husband and father is that whatever troubles and anxieties cloud your mind, learn, once you reach the front of your house, to put them all aside, go in, be a cheerful husband and father, relax your family, sleep, and pick it up again the next day. Obama said the same in one of his books — that when contending with many troubles, whenever he got home he would set the troubles aside, figuratively, and pick them up again the next day. And did our Lord not say, “Which of you by worrying can add a cubit to his stature?” — and, “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble”? There will always be bills to pay and things to do. Let us learn to rest.
I am sure that, sitting in his cell, this man who killed another because he kept driving for 53 hours would say to himself, “Maybe I could just have rested. What is the worst that could have happened?” Even if he himself had died — the world would have continued without missing a beat. That is the most humbling thing about life: think of the most consequential person in the world, or in your organisation; if that person fell today, the world would continue. We should understand that. And note that in the early days, in Exodus, we did not have only an admonition to rest, but prohibitions against not resting, with penalties as well. So let us learn the lesson, and empathise — we can only sympathise with the family of the man killed, since we are not in their shoes; let us pray the Lord will comfort them. Yesterday we thought through how an innocent person becomes the victim, and the loved ones ask, “What did he do wrong?” What did Philip Bray do wrong? Was he to pay for the recklessness of a man who refused to sleep? These are things we cannot fully understand in a fallen world; so it is our duty to pray for comfort for such people, to ask the Lord’s protection, and to be ourselves neither so reckless nor negligent that we harm others. And we should pray for Erukulu himself, sitting in his cell — for whatever guilt now robs him of peace; he was guilty, but it is not irredeemable, and we should pray the Lord will comfort him and grant him forgiving grace.
One takeaway: sleep is a gift. If you can sleep at the time you ought to sleep — notwithstanding your worries, unmet needs and unpaid bills — that is a gift from God. Psalm 127:2: “He gives His beloved sleep.” And Psalm 4: “I will both lie down in peace and sleep, for You alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” Are there dangers, concerns, pressures? Learn to sleep, notwithstanding. I knew a man heavily in debt, pressed on every side by creditors, who, whenever he wanted to eat, would put his phone on silent for the length of the meal, enjoy it, and put the notifications back on afterwards; whenever he wanted to sleep, he would put his phone on Do Not Disturb, sleep, and turn it back on after. We have to learn that the world will not crash. There is a Latin maxim in law: fiat justitia ruat caelum — let justice be done, though the heavens fall. But the heavens will not fall. So, brothers and sisters, sleep and rest, even though the heavens threaten to fall — because we know they will not, because there is a hand that carries us. It all ties back to how much faith we have in the One who rules and reigns over the affairs of men. It glorifies Him when you are able to submit yourself to Him and sleep, because by doing so you are saying, “The Lord can take care of me.” I pray comfort for the family of the man who was killed, restoration and peace for the man who killed him, that regulators everywhere will use this occasion to protect private drivers too, and deepened faith for you and me — that, notwithstanding the pressures of life, we can say, “Lord, give me sleep,” and rest when we should rest, knowing that in the hand of the Lord God Almighty, all is well.
ON A SENATOR, A STUDENT’S LAP, AND THE APPEARANCE OF EVIL
Next, a video that has gone viral on social media in Nigeria, showing the All Progressives Congress gubernatorial candidate in Oyo State, Senator Sharafadeen Alli, with a young man — certainly no less than 18, I would put it — sitting on his lap during a campaign interview, with the senator’s hand on the young man’s thigh in what appears to be a caressing motion. Many people exploded in outrage: what exactly is this? Given the culture we live in, and the stories we hear of all sorts of sexual deviance, many were shocked and embarrassed.
The senator’s camp has come out with an explanation: there weren’t enough chairs. Students — from the banking and finance department of The Polytechnic, Ibadan — were invited to meet the governorship candidate, to ask him questions or interview him; he found there weren’t enough chairs, and, not wanting that young man to be the only one standing, invited him to sit on his lap. Even as I repeat it, I find it difficult to understand — as did many commentators. This man, Senator Sharafadeen Alli, was born on the 23rd of April 1963, so he is 63 years old — an adult, a lawyer, with a PhD in legislative and strategic studies; he has been chairman of a local government, secretary to the state government under Governor Rashidi Ladoja, chief of staff to a governor, and has represented Oyo South in the Senate since 2013. By Nigerian standards, an accomplished, politically seasoned man. So you cannot say this is someone who did not know what he was doing.
What did the video show? The young man seated on the senator’s lap during an interview at the campaign office in Mokola, Ibadan; the senator in a blue APC face cap, his right hand resting on the young man’s thigh; and, according to one news platform, the senator repeatedly moving his hand up and down in what appeared to be a caressing motion. Many who saw it reported that the young man appeared uncomfortable throughout. We do not know his name, and I hope it never finds its way into the public space — otherwise, whenever anyone Googles it, this is what will come up; let him remain simply one of the banking-and-finance students who visited. The senator’s camp calls it a spontaneous, fatherly gesture. I find that difficult to accept. If it were spontaneous and fatherly, it is still cringeworthy — not something a savvy politician should do in the culture we live in, a culture where there is so much depravity. Let us be clear: I need not be a sexual deviant to hold male persons suggestively and then plead, “But I’m not depraved in the way this culture is known for.” We ourselves, knowing we live in such a depraved culture, should not give occasion for any such thing. When you do the ordinarily acceptable things, you will not be accused of anything; but when you do questionable, improper things that lack propriety, you open yourself to all sorts of accusations.
Let me moderate this by noting that the student has made no accusation against the senator, and the senator has said nothing personally. But if you saw that video and cringed, you did not react wrongly — we should cringe at it. There is a God-given reaction in every human being, almost like a sense of smell: the way you recoil when you smell something odious, something gone bad, before you even touch it. That is a beautiful thing built into us by our Maker — to know, just by smelling, that something is rancid. And you know one of the horrors of leprosy is that the senses are deadened, so that a leper could grip a hot iron and not know it, becoming aware only afterward when he sees the scalded skin. That is why, in the Old Testament, elaborate regulations were made for lepers — and we have compared humanity before the ubiquity of the Holy Spirit to lepers, who must be told in minute detail what to do at every point, because anyone without the Holy Spirit is like a leper, unable to tell what is wrong from what is right, what is dangerous from what is safe. The point is that there are things we should know just from “smelling” them — that it is improper to sit someone who is not my child on my lap, whether male or female; and even for a niece, or even my own daughter, I would be careful. Some things are simply clear, and for anyone to say, “It wasn’t that clear,” is to refuse to be as straightforward as they should.
I watched a segment on Arise News where one commentator tried to lend credence to the camp’s explanation of a “fatherly gesture” — and thankfully, one of the female commentators made the point that no parent, seeing his or her child sitting on an adult’s lap and having their thigh caressed, would be comfortable with that. The Bible enjoins us to abstain not only from evil but from “all appearance of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22) — anything that carries even a hint of impropriety, abstain from it. To greet a married woman is not wrong, but to hold her too tightly, in a suggestive manner, is an appearance of evil. And 1 Timothy 5: treat an older man as a father and the younger men as brothers, with all purity — everything we do must carry that appearance of purity and moderation. We are not going out to judge, or to make a categorical statement about why the senator sat that young man on his lap or why he was caressing his thigh — we do not know. But we should be able to say it was improper; that it is not something that should be done in our society; that it gives an appearance of impropriety, an appearance of evil, and gives real concern to many who are watching the culture. That Senator Sharafadeen Alli did not understand this — and that his media aides did not see anything wrong while it was happening — is deeply troubling, and I think we should leave it at that: troubling.
And it should remind us, on the Lord’s side, that we are not only to flee from evil, but to abstain from every appearance of evil. Nor should we beat ourselves up, wondering, “Am I the only one seeing something wrong here?” No — you are not; this reaction is a God-given gift to all human beings, part of our biology, that we can see and “smell” something wrong and know it before we put our hands into it. So for all who saw that video and cringed, that is a good thing — your conscience is properly formatted. It is those who see nothing wrong with it whom we should be concerned about: how can you see nothing wrong in a video like that? I pray God will keep blessing our nations with people circumspect enough to know what to do and what not to do — and we should pray for ourselves to know, from time to time, what is right and what is wrong. That is a very important prayer, and we should not make light of it.
ON THE PASTOR WHO “PHONED HEAVEN”
Next, the story of a pastor shown in a video clip on X. If you could see it, you would see a church service in progress — the congregants on their feet, a woman in a white dress on her knees, and the pastor holding a phone to his ear, “ministering” to the woman in the language of contemporary Christianity. In the clip, the pastor pretends to be on a call to heaven — “Is that heaven? Is that Heaven?” — relaying to the kneeling woman the things “God” is supposedly telling him, and she affirms each one as the congregation applauds: asking who a certain person is; saying God is showing him a heart; that they should pray for her two children, one epileptic, one asthmatic; that her “story has changed — stand up”; naming a place, and so on. The person who posted it captioned it, “Pastor is on the phone talking to God in the middle of a church service.”
Now, make of it what you will. One commenter wrote: “Atheists don’t even mock God the way these charlatans do — it is nowhere close.” And that sets us thinking. To not believe in God at all is a great mockery; yet, this person says, even atheists do not mock God the way these charlatans do — because these are people who affirm that God exists, who claim to know that the Lord is God, who claim to be His servants, and yet do things like this, projecting to a congregation what is not true. That is truly disturbing. Another wrote, “He didn’t package it well; let the man from a certain big ministry do the same, and you’ll love it” — and I always refrain from a categorical statement, but the point is that this is not the only platform where such things happen. Another wrote, “I’ve never seen pastors like this as the problem; it’s the gullible followers I don’t understand.” And that is exactly where I like to pitch my tent. You will never have a shortage of false preachers, charlatans, wolves in sheep’s clothing, actors in the church — they will always be there. It is the gullible follower — those who believe them — who is the deeper issue. It takes grace, discernment and divine protection to be shielded from them, because if the wolf is well-dressed, you can be taken in. But that is why we must not be among the gullible.
If a man came into a congregation where I worship and said, “Let us pray; I’m going to call heaven now, because that’s how God speaks to me,” and punched some buttons on his phone and told us he had connected to God — “Is that heaven? Good morning; I have members of this church with me, what do you want me to tell them?” — and then relayed messages, I should not be gullible enough to swoon, “What a man! What a privileged, spiritually-minded man of God, who can just call God on his mobile phone!” That is the whole point of what this preacher was doing: projecting that he has such a fantastic relationship with God that he can simply phone Him — and everything he told the kneeling woman, she affirmed as true. You would have to be naïve to suppose that really happened; there are now verified, established cases of fraudsters staging such things. And, as the commenter said, it is not the deceivers who are the problem — we will never solve that; it is the gullible followers who do not know their God.
That is why I have always said the most important thing a Christian can do is to know his God — and the only way to know Him is to study the Bible. When you study it, you know who God is and who He is not, how He speaks and how He does not, what He loves and what He does not, what He would and would not do, what He respects in His followers. Once you know these things, you will not be taken in by actors, charlatans and wolves in sheep’s clothing. Unfortunately, many more will go to this church and say, “Please, make a call to heaven on my behalf; I want to hear what everyone thinks about me and my circumstances” — which is exactly what he was gunning for. I believe he published that video, or allowed it, so that many more would say, “There’s a pastor in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, who has God’s telephone number,” and flock to his church.
At our Bible study yesterday, we were discussing Mark 15 — how, at our Lord’s death on the cross, the temple veil was torn from top to bottom, from above — and we celebrated the access we have been granted to the Holy of Holies; the access each believer now has to God, directly. If this man claimed to punch some numbers and get through to heaven — well, you do not even need a phone; you have even greater access. You just need to go on your knees and, in the name of Jesus, call on your Father: “Abba, Father, what do You have to say to me?” And if you listen, you will hear Him — perhaps not immediately, but He turns no one away. Which takes us to the theme of our devotional today, from Charles Spurgeon’s writing on the leper who said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me whole,” and the Lord answered, “I am willing; be cleansed.” Follow the leper’s example: go to Jesus, kneel, and exercise whatever little faith you have, even if it goes no further than, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me whole” — because Jesus turns no one away. That pastor suggested he had access to God by telephone; but he could only get away with it among people who do not know their God, and do not know the access they now have directly. You do not even need a telephone to talk to God; you do not even need to open your mouth. Just say it by faith — “Lord, intervene in my matter; reveal what You want me to know; lead me, guide me, help me, step into my situation” — and you will find you have far greater access than that man who had to punch numbers.
I want to thank you so very much for staying with me this morning on GospelBells Radio, On the Lord’s Side — Christian perspectives on news and current events. I hope to be with you again 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.
