When Vested Interests Trump Justice… And Compromise Air Travel Safety And Security, By Bolanle BOLAWOLE

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The saying goes that too many cooks spoil the broth; in like manner, too many vested interests have intervened to trump justice, thereby setting a bad precedent that is likely to compromise air travel decorum, safety and security in the days, weeks, months and years to come. Long-established protocols may have been thrown to the dogs!

The running story of breach of airport security protocols, which has become a run-away story, and which everyone is panting to catch up with, began on Tuesday, 5 August, 2025 when Wasiu Ayinde Adewale Olasunkanmi Omogbolagun Anifowoshe aka K1 De Ultimate or KWAM 1, disrupted air traffic at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.

A popular Fuji music crooner and perceived “personal person”, as it is called here, of the Nigerian ruler, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Wasiu was billed to board a commercial ValueJet aircraft from Abuja to Lagos but was deboarded, according to confirmed reports, for carrying a golden (?) flask containing an unidentified liquid, whose identity became the source of controversy. Did Wasiu’s flask contain water or alcohol?Is any liquid at all allowed on aircraft, be it water or alcohol?

Is liquid allowed on aircraft?

I asked Google (which boasts that we should ask anything!) and this is the answer I got: “Yes, passengers are allowed to carry liquids inside aircraft, but with restrictions. Liquids, aerosols, and gels must be in containers of 100 milliliters (3.4 ounces) or less per item, and these containers must fit into a single, transparent, resealable plastic bag no larger than 1 liter (1 quart). Wasiu’s golden flask and or its content did not appear to fit into Google’s description of what is permissible on aircraft.

For Wasiu, it could even be that the content of the flask was not the issue but the flask itself – the status symbol of a golden flask! For he could easily have got water right inside the aircraft, if water was the issue. And speaking of the golden flask reminds me of the late Libyan leader, “Gadfly” Muammar Gaddafi, who reportedly carried a golden pistol on the day he was cornered and killed on 20 October, 2011. The golden pistol availeth him nothing! Talk less of a mere golden flask, however golden!

The face-off at the airport almost cost Wasiu his life. Na play-na play, an enraged pilot engaged the gear of her aircraft while the crooner was still stalling under it; only a timely ducking saved him from being decapitated. Women can be audacious when pushed to the wall. Don’t try them! No one knows this better than William Shakespeare when he said hell hath no fury than a woman scorned!

After climbing down from her cockpit to appease Wasiu to no avail, with the musician even alleged to have deliberately spilled the contents of his golden flask on the pilot’s sparkling, immaculate pilot’s uniform, she must have determined to teach the errant crooner and his likes a lesson, come what may, for mistaking an airport environment for their usual “agbo faaji” (entertainment spot)!

Wasiu has since apologised, profusely, especially to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. But what has Tinubu got to do with it? The answer is, plenty! Especially when everyone began to insinuate that Wasiu’s audacity might have had something to do with his perceived closeness to Mr. President. Otherwise, where did his confidence, bordering on intoxication, come from?

Is putting your phone in flight mode the same as switching it off?

It was as if the Wasiu incident opened a floodgate of airport security protocol breaches, two of which reportedly engulfed the Akwa Ibom state-run Ibom Air. In one of the instances, a female passenger who claimed her luggage was left behind by the aircraft refused to leave and allow new passengers to board the aircraft, thus disrupting the flight and causing untold anguish to many of the would-be passengers who had other connecting flights to catch and important engagements to honour.

But the incident that caught worldwide attention, indeed, far beyond Wasiu’s, involved a lady called Comfort Emmanson. So many versions of the same story has made authenticity difficult to establish but going by my professional training, I am persuaded to go with reported eye-witness accounts which run thus: Emmanson was asked to follow the standard (?) procedure of switching off her phone as the aircraft was about to take off. She responded that she had already put her phone on “Flight mode”, an answer that did not satisfy the cabin attendant.

Again, I turned to Google: Is putting one’s phone on flight mode when an aircraft is about to take-off or land the same thing as switching off the phone? A regular air traveller was quoted as saying: “All airlines in the world only ask you to turn your phone to flight mode. Flight mode is built for flights. Nobody tells you to switch your phone off.”

What happens when you put your phone on flight or airplane mode while flying? Google’s response: “With a quick tap, airplane mode turns off a cell phone’s radio frequencies, stopping its ability to make and receive calls, texts or use the internet”.

Is airplane mode the same as turning the phone off? Google: “What is the difference between turning off your phone and putting it in airplane mode? Airplane mode disables all wireless connections on the phone, including the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular signals. This makes it possible to reduce the risks of interference with the aircraft’s navigation equipment” .

Do pilots know if your phone is on airplane mode? Google: “As a rule, no. There is no device that is regularly installed on airplanes that can figure out how many phones, tablets, e-readers or other kinds of devices are (switched) on in the cabin”.

Can a plane crash if your phone is not in airplane mode? Google: “No, your phone will not crash the plane. Modern aircraft systems are robustly shielded and built to stringent FAA standards – there is no documented case of a plane crash caused by a passenger device”.

After all these questions-and-answers, I became curious: Why would pilots and crew members insist on passengers turning off their phone if putting it in flight mode is safe enough? Is it to make assurance doubly sure, as they say? Is this a case of erring on the side of caution? If so, very well! Life has no duplicate. “It has not happened before can happen one day”, as my people would say!

Again, I wondered: Why would anyone insist on putting his/her phone in flight mode when the internet, Wi-Fi, etc will no longer be functional? Can anyone play games on his/her phone even when it is in flight mode? Google: “Yes, you can play games on your phone while it is in flight mode. Flight mode disables Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections, but it does not turn off the phone or prevent you from using apps that do not require internet access, such as offline games”.

Could it, then, be the urge or craze to play offline games that made Emmanson insist on keeping her phone in flight mode despite the instructions of the flight attendant to the contrary?

If the answers provided above are anything to go by, Emmanson might have deemed herself not to have done anything wrong. And with proper training, cabin attendants ought to know that there is not much difference between flight mode and switching a phone off. But how are we sure is the question here!

Again, it shouldn’t have been too much of a “sacrifice” for Emmanson to consider the preference – and fears, however unjustified – of the crew and other passengers who might have felt that phones should be switched off for them to be assured of their safety. Just an hour flight!

In the event that someone is seen still “pressing phone”, as they say, when flight attendants have repeatedly instructed her to switch the phone off, this can effectively cause apprehension, panic, and commotion, with the attendant breakdown of law and order.

But once the flight had been successfully operated with no mishap, should the cabin crew still insist that Emmanson be handed over to airport security? Shouldn’t she have been allowed to “carry her wahala go” and exit the cabin jejely, as they say? But, again, would that not embolden her to repeat the same behaviour another time? Will her example not corrupt others if she is not brought to book?

It is while trying to “show her”, according to eye witness accounts, that the cabin attendant prevented her from exiting the cabin, delaying her for airport security to arrive to take her away. Women! Why did the airport security delay coming? Were they not called on time?

Can cabin crew get physical with passengers?

This leads us to the question of what kind of training pilots, crew members and airport officials receive. Again, I asked Google: Are crew members allowed to get physical with passengers? The response: “While aircraft crew members are not generally allowed to engage in physical altercations with passengers, they can use reasonable force to restrain a passenger in situations where the passenger poses a threat to the safety of themselves or others. This is a last resort measure, and crew members must follow strict procedures and obtain permission from the commander (captain) before restraining a passenger”.

In Emmanson’s case, eye witnesses said it was when she was prevented from exiting the cabin that she (over) reacted. Was the force used on her “reasonable”, up to the degree of rendering her naked?

The gulf between the slap-on-the-wrist treatment meted out to Wasiu and the sledge-hammer descent on Emmanson enraged a nation usually divided on ethnic, religious and, now, gender lines, giving rise to all manner of conspiracy theories. Whereas Wasiu walked away from the scene of his own misdemeanor, Emmanson ended up in Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison!

Wasiu is Yoruba. The ValueJet pilot is Yoruba. The owner of the airline is Yoruba. Yet, no “parapo”, as they call it here, was allowed to come into play. The most vociferous critics of Wasiu’s action have been Yoruba. On social media, he became the butt of cruel jokes from his Yoruba compatriots. In Emmanson’s case: Ibom Air, Emmanson herself, the Minister of Aviation, the Airline Operators of Nigeria spokesperson, Professor Obiora Okonkwo, who announced a controversial lifetime “no-fly” ban on Emmanson, are all from the same South-South/South-East part of the country. So, the best theory to apply here is not ethnic, religious or gender; class analysis is the most appropriate: poor versus rich, and influential versus commoner.

Is the law an ass?

All’s well that ends well (apologies, again, to William Shakespeare)! Or how best do we describe the Nigerian government’s decision to grant reprieve or amnesty to everyone involved in the aforementioned airport protocols melee: Wasiu, ValueJet pilots, Emmanson, Ibom Air, name it! Because, according to the Aviation minister, Festus Keyamo, SAN, all of them sinned (fell foul of the law/appropriate regulations) and came short of the kind of behaviour expected of them!

But the more reason, then, why the law should have been allowed to run its full course! According to Professor Tope Ogunbodede, the immediate past vice-chancellor, Obafemi Awolowo University, “disruption that delayed a scheduled commercial flight… is not a minor misunderstanding (but) is, under Nigerian law, a potential criminal offence under Section 459A of the Criminal Code, which prescribes up to two years’ imprisonment for obstructing or impeding an aircraft’s movement”.

Another of my esteemed readers, Kola Awodein, SAN, while supporting the preliminary decisions on Wasiu and the ValueJet pilots by Keyamo, however reasoned that apologies (which I seemed to have suggested) do not sufficiently vitiate the need for penalties to be exacted for offences committed, regardless whose ox is gored! “People who violate the law should be punished like everyone else, no matter how highly placed or connected…Such an action will send the right message, and creditably serve all of us and our country well”.

I agree! Why keep laws in our statute books – and still many more are daily being added by the National Assembly at great costs to hapless Nigerian taxpayers – when we have no intention of putting the laws to test or allowing them run their full course simply because of vested interests?

Former editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/Editor-in-chief of The Westerner news magazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the Sunday Tribune and TREASURES column in New Telegraph newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.