| Speaking Truth to Power: 'Re-British Airways removes 136 Nigerians from Flight' |
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| Written by Dr Olu Ojedokun | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 10 April 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I did not intend to write this article but noted with great interest the reported circumstances given rise to the 27th March 2008 incident where a British Airways captain ordered 136 Nigerian passengers off his plane for ‘creating a disturbance’. A ‘disturbance’ created because the Nigerians were complaining to the cabin crew about the ‘inhumane’ treatment of a Nigerian deportee. I have also read with a mixture of some sorrow and rage the account of one of the passengers, Ayodeji Omotade about his the arrest for simply ‘speaking up’. A lot of responses to the story has been in a similar vein, in most cases urging the boycott of British Airways and I in no way disagree with these. However, I would suggest that I am aware that British Airways is simply one of the many airlines that serves and treats its Nigerian passengers with utter contempt and derision. I will draw a direct analogy from own personal experience to support this assertion. Last November on the 19th, on my way back to Nigeria I almost fell victim to a similar experience with Virgin Atlantic. For some inexplicable reason to do with water storage our flight due to depart at 10.00pm was delayed, we were allowed to board the flight, waiting and sitting until after 2.00am when we were advised of the flight cancellation, in fairness to the airline we were kept updated by the captain at some intervals. Eventually we were all offloaded and had to spend another 2 hours before were finally checked into a hotel room for the remaining hours of the ‘night’. The next day, we were rescheduled to travel at 11.00am but the flight was again delayed, whilst waiting the patience of my fellow Nigerians snapped and they started protesting about the suggested levels of compensation in the characteristically rigorous manner to which we are sometimes associated with. Some of us tried to prevail on them to ‘cool temper’ and seek to be tactical in their protest because of the tendency for the airline officials to overact by calling upon the security agencies. True to type, our fears were confirmed when before we realised it, a number of fully armed anti-terrorist policemen had appeared on the scene ready to cart ‘unruly’ Nigerians away to the Paddington Police Station for questioning and all other myriad of trumped up anti terrorism charges. It only took the common sense of some of the officials of the airline to avert this. Later on the aircraft some ‘articulate’ Nigerian started screaming about all the injustice and the captain almost aborted the flight. A friend of mine when examining this issue was able to provide a profound analysis and in the rest of this article I seek to draw almost exclusively from him. He sees a wider more complex issue at play and would appear to suggest that we react with great sophistication in order to address and resolve it. He considers the issue concerning the trend; the treatment of Nigerians with utter contempt actually runs deeper than it would at first appear to be, for he suggests it is not simply an airline taking advantage of people. His analysis perceives the airlines realises and knows that we Nigerians have little access to recourse through dysfunctional government mechanisms. In my own view they are also discerning enough to come up with an analysis that our government is one mesmerized by the complexities of power. I develop this by drawing further from my own previous analysis, and would suggest they see a government that has increasingly failed to learn and appreciate the necessity to incorporate into its analysis of power the question of control over its agenda. That has failed in its understanding of the need to find ways in which potential issues are kept out of the public political/decision making process so that public exposure of the power is avoided.[1] In the process constantly failing in a proper grasp of governance, becoming a laughing stock, being manipulated by different interests, including foreign who perceive gaps and differences within the government decision making machinery. Returning to my friend’s analysis, he suggests that British Airways would ordinarily not have to bear the burden of repatriating Nigerian nationals judged to have run afoul of the immigration laws in Britain, if a licensed flag carrying airline from Nigeria was available. I agree with his analysis that this is emblematic of the larger fight, that British Airways is simply just another pawn on the chess board of ‘retaliatory’ politics practised by the two governments of Nigerian and Britain. That British Airways itself has indeed suffered severely in the past, at the hands both governments in retaliation for some iniquitous situation foisted on Nigeria by Britain; usually over disputes concerning bilateral flight slots into key airports etc. The key issue he raises is how we must learn to shift the emphasis of our struggle against the remaining vestiges of ‘colonial tyranny’, from the sensational to the practical. How can ‘our airlines’ step up their game to the extent that the exorbitant airline ticket prices become redundant and Nigerians have greater choices. For if we are strategic in our responses then British Airways and indeed others would become more sensitive to us rather than loose us to rival airlines. The facts are that officially by simple extrapolation from widely held assumption, which states that 1 in every 5 African is a Nigerian one can suggest that in the UK there are over 100,000 Nigerians.[2] This does not take into account those that reside there outside immigration laws. Most of these have cause to travel on some regular basis. Again this does not take into account the many Nigerians that travel into Britain on a regular basis. Imagine, deploying this mass of numbers strategically to make a point. He concludes by stating that it is the mastery of the market place that has now placed the Western countries in disadvantageous positions against the emergent economies in whose hands the future of the US Dollars for example lies. He concludes by stating that we have no choice but to follow their footsteps, creating value, deploying economies of scale where they exist and build staggering trade surpluses. I end rather naively by stating that we need a variety of responses including that of speaking truth to power, so that our government creates an atmosphere where it is impossible for us to be treated in this manner. The writer is a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and previously affiliated to the Law Society of England and Wales.
[1] Ojedokun, Olu (2006): Speaking Truth To Power: South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Work of Albie Sachs; p.138 [2] Downloaded on 27th February 2007 from http//: www.capuchinng.org/nigeria.htm.
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Posted by Robot| 10.04.2008 14:10