When Comfort Emmanson boarded her Ibom Air flight that day, she could never have imagined that a routine trip would spiral into a public humiliation, an arrest, and an experience that would place her at the center of a national conversation about dignity, power, and justice in Nigeria. What happened to her was more than a dispute between a passenger and a flight attendant. It was more than the overreach of one airline or the decision of one staff member. This was a story about the deep sickness that runs through the veins of the Nigerian state.
This is the same sickness that delays justice for victims of political looting, that turns police checkpoints into toll gates for extortion, that reduces public service to petty tyranny, and that teaches people in positions of minor authority to see themselves not as servants of the public, but as little monarchs entitled to unquestioned obedience. It is the same mentality that can frustrate a citizen at the desk of a government office, in the queue at a bank, or on the bed of a public hospital. Now, it has followed us into the air, proving that Nigerian oppression is not bound by geography or altitude. It can humiliate you on the road, in the marketplace, or even 30,000 feet above the ground.
The roots of this problem stretch far back. In the colonial period, the role of the public servant was not to serve the public but to control and regulate them on behalf of the colonial authorities. Authority was measured not in efficiency or kindness, but in the ability to dominate and intimidate. After independence, instead of dismantling that model, we inherited it wholesale. The uniforms changed, the flags changed, the names of institutions changed, but the culture remained. Today, this colonial hangover still defines our service sector. From the immigration officer who treats travelers as suspects rather than citizens, to the nurse who sees patients as interruptions, to the airline staff who see passengers as irritants to be disciplined, the DNA of domination has survived for generations.
In countries with healthy service cultures, customer service is about problem-solving and respect. In Nigeria, too often, it becomes a performance of power. The smallest disagreement becomes an opportunity to assert authority. A passenger asking a question becomes an offense. A reminder about luggage becomes a challenge to supremacy. What happened to Comfort was not just the product of one bad day, it was the predictable outcome of a system where “The customer is king” has been replaced with “The customer is a subject.”
Then there is the question of public humiliation. Comfort’s dignity was stripped in view of others, and this is no accident. It is part of a much larger Nigerian tradition. From the young man forced to kneel in the dust by police officers for looking like a Yahoo boy, to the market woman whose goods are seized in front of customers by a task force without due process, to the student flogged before her classmates, public shaming is not just tolerated here; it is institutionalized. It is used as a method of control, a way of reminding citizens that they are powerless. It is theatre, performed for the benefit of onlookers, to send the message: “This could happen to you.”
And it works. It works because our justice system has never been designed to protect the dignity of the citizen. It exists to protect the power of those who already have it. That is why the swiftness of Comfort’s arrest and detention should not surprise anyone. When the powerless are accused, the state acts with the speed of lightning. In her case, the chain of events from disagreement to arrest to imprisonment unfolded with shocking efficiency. But when the powerful are implicated, when a governor loots ₦50 billion, or a politically connected thug kills someone, the same system moves with the pace of a limping tortoise. Court files vanish into thin air. Judges suddenly fall ill. Adjournments pile up until the public forgets. In Nigeria, justice is a matter of social class. The poor get it swift and brutal. The rich get it slow and negotiable.
The airline incident, when placed under the microscope, reveals itself to be part of a much bigger picture. It is a culture of impunity that links together the customs officer extorting traders, the police sergeant planting evidence to collect a bribe, the court clerk selling lost case files, and the political elite who enjoy immunity in practice, if not in law. All of these abuses are different scenes in the same movie. They share the same script: the rules apply downward, never upward. The law bends for power, but crushes the powerless.
What makes the Comfort Emmanson case especially significant is that it exposes how these patterns survive in spaces that should symbolize modernity and professionalism. An airline cabin is a controlled environment. The staff are supposed to be trained in customer care and conflict resolution. Yet even there, the instinct to dominate trumped the responsibility to serve. This is why the conversation about this incident must go beyond airline policies. It must go to the root of our national service culture, our justice system, and our collective tolerance for public humiliation as a form of discipline.
Real change will not come from firing one flight attendant or issuing one public apology. Real change requires dismantling the architecture of everyday tyranny that meets the Nigerian citizen in every aspect of life. Too many of us think of revolution as simply replacing one president with another. But political change without cultural change is like painting over rust. It looks new for a while, but the decay is still eating through the metal underneath.
A true Nigerian revolution must include a reeducation of our service institutions, a justice system that prioritizes dignity as much as legality, and a complete rejection of public humiliation as a social tool. It must create a country where whether you are in a market stall, on a hospital bed, in a government office, or in the skies, your humanity is non-negotiable. In this vision of a new Nigeria, a citizen like Comfort Emmanson would never have been treated as she was. Her complaint would have been heard, her rights respected, and her dignity preserved.
Comfort’s humiliation is not hers alone. It is ours. It is the humiliation of every Nigerian who has been talked down to, bullied, or treated as subhuman by the very people paid to serve them. Her persecution is our persecution. If we allow this case to fade quietly, we send a dangerous message to the system: do it again. And they will, again and again, with different names and different faces.
That is why this fight must be part of the broader struggle for the soul of this country. It is not about turbulence in the air, it is about turbulence in the heart of the Nigerian state. And until we rise, not just against one leader, but against the entire operating system of oppression, there will be no safe seat in any aircraft, no safe road, no safe market, no safe hospital, and no fair courtroom in this land. Comfort Emmanson’s story is a warning. The question is, will we listen?
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