On Thursday, Mr. Isa Bayero, a relative of the Emir of Kano released a statement condemning Air Peace for disrespecting the Emir. He said the airline had refused to allow Emir Ado Bayero and his 9-man entourage to board their Wednesday morning connecting flight from Lagos to Kano, on their way back from Banjul, The Gambia. Their Air Peace flight from Banjul had been delayed by one hour which meant they had arrived in Lagos too close to the departure time of their connecting flight. Mr. Bayero reached out to the Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace to help make sure the Kano flight was delayed so the Emir and his entourage can board.
“Is it really necessary to remind Mr. Bayero that while Nigeria has thousands of kings, the country is not a monarchy?”
Air Peace refused to accede to the request and the Emir’s crew missed their connecting flight. Mr Bayero was incensed and he wrote to the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority demanding they sanction Air Peace, not only for delaying the Banjul-Lagos flight but for what Mr Bayero says was “an insult and a flagrant show of disrespect to his highness and the Kano people at large.”
While one will ordinarily sympathise with Mr. Bayero and his principal, the Emir, for the flight delay in Banjul, it is ridiculous to suggest that a flight delay or the refusal of Air Peace to delay a flight for the Emir amounts to a disrespect of the people of Kano. This is an unfortunate Nigerian bigmanism taken to a ridiculous height. For someone who just experienced an hour delay in Banjul, Mr. Bayero should ordinarily be the last person to ask that other passengers in Lagos be subjected to the same experience.
In its statement, Air Peace claimed that their CEO actually tried to delay the Kano flight on receiving the request but was unable to do so as boarding had already been completed and the aircraft was already taxiing in preparation for take-off by the time the Emir’s crew arrived in Lagos. They would have had to delay the plane for 45 minutes to an hour to accommodate the request.
While I wasn’t surprised that an airline CEO would try to delay a flight for a VIP customer, it was nonetheless saddening to read the admission. No airline CEO should be able to carry out a flight delay request from a customer. Some things should operate according to established processes without bigmanism intervening. The job of a CEO should not involve scheduling flights or tampering with such schedules to satisfy a customer, however highly placed. There is a reason flight charter exists for customers who do not want to deal with the time and space constraints of commercial flights.
Sadly, the explanation from Air Peace has not satisfied Mr. Bayero who has issued another thinly veiled threat at Air Peace and its CEO. In a statement dripping with venom that can only be a product of overdose of bigmanism, Mr. Bayero said he was giving the airline 72 hours to apologize in national dailies and in person at the Kano palace, or else he and the people of Kano would “go to any length to defend and protect any act of insensitivity against our prestigious traditional institution.” Is this a threat of violence?
Is it really necessary to remind Mr. Bayero that while Nigeria has thousands of kings, the country is not a monarchy? We are a constitutional democracy and there are no lèse-majesté laws to compel any citizens to respect any king. Monarchists cannot use threats to force fellow citizens to grovel at the feet of their kings. Like other citizens, however, the Emir and Mr. Isa Bayero are free to sue Air Peace for breach of contract or whatever other lapses their lawyers can pack into the suit. In the meantime, the Palace should call Mr. Isa Bayero to order immediately as his over-bloated sense of self-importance on behalf of the Emir can have adverse repercussions. Mr. Bayero already has done much to expose the venerated institution of the Kano Emirate to public ridicule. The revered Emir should never be seen as one of the nation’s surplus supply of big men who throw their enormous weight about asking “do you know who I am?” in order to secure undue advantage over fellow Nigerians. He is and must be seen to be above them.
