This piece is a response to a comment and I present the comment here while my personal comment is below it under the My comment
Have we ever stopped standing up for injustice? In fact, we speak too much most time. Our problem is that those who should implement fairness are nowhere to be found (they'd look away).
This student was asked to leave the class never to return. Although it was set up for learning purposes but she walked out quietly. Can that happen in our clime? Can a student respectfully walk out quietly, especially this generation?
I feel we need to start learning from how we react to conflicts. Right from school age, the IBOM AIR HOSTESSES might have been engaging in physical combats with their schoolmates and ripping clothes. People like that shouldn't even be an attendant.
What brought us here are all aggressive and violent actions and reactions to simple issues.
A sha ni ja ku?
My comment
I am 100% in agreement with the observation here, except that it's one-sided and will not achieve the goal of fairness and justice that we seek. But the concept of speaking up is an important part. It's rooted in all of us.
When we talk about fairness, it sometimes looks like everyone sticks to their side of the truth and how they want their perception to be the universal truth. This is where issues lie.
Someone once said there are three types of truth:
1. our truth
2. their truth
3. And the actual truth
In most cases, the most prominent truths on social media and in our society, 99% of the time, are numbers 1 and 2. When you examine both sides, they are often right from their angles.
They perfectly illustrated the proverbial case of a big elephant and three blind men. And each person sticks to their side of the truth based on emotion, conviction, personal experience and sometimes a desire to be validated.
This leads to back-and-forth controversy that are never resolve.
But if the majority who hold truths 1 and 2 truly want fairness and justice, they will look at truth number 3: the unpleasant truth, which is sometimes deliberated concealed by 1 and 2 in a bid to court public attention and validate their actions and reactions. and in a bid to obliterate their side of misdeed.
Let's apply this to the issue raised. A few people who were very observant, including eyewitness, agreed that Comfort broke the rule and that the altercation resulting from her breaking the rule started the entire fiasco, which could have been handled without issue. This is undeniable truth and belongs to number 3.
Without her action, the entire controversy would not have occurred. The average flyer faces this number 3 in every flight. Some people even narrated their experiences and how they handled it. We are used to allowing people selectively break the rule so as to allow peace to reign. This has created a situation where many people feel it is nothing. We do not care about safety of other people but our own comfort and ideals. This manifest in our daily life and has contributed into our national chaos in many aspects.
From the eyewitness, the lady did it twice. No one has validated what she said because we all know it was wrong. But most of us have been making comments like the hostess and airline just went to start a fight with her. This is where the truth was distorted and makes fairness an awkward observation.
Some years back, I learned one valuable lesson from Zig Ziglar about reacting to issues. There is a difference between responding and reacting.
According to him, the same negative issue can happen, and people take different directions to address it.
Reacting to an issue is always because one has lost their balance or is emotionally unintelligent. Responding to an issue, on the other hand, is a different thing. You still address that issue without aggression, anger, or vengeance. this take a lot of emotional intelligent.
For example, the hostess and the lady reacted to issues that most people responded to. None of them wanted to shift ground. "Turn off your phone" (we may not like it, but that is their rule). We can respond to this by calling for a change or filing a complaint. But we can also react by rejecting the rule and resorting to self-help and confrontation, which is what Comfort did.
The hostess also reacted. She could have waited until the end of the journey and called security on her to do their job; that is responding. From the look of it, she partially did that. But the security also reacted to the resistance rather than responding by being aggressive.
From that moment onward, everyone lost their mind. It is not because they are crazy but because none of them believe in fairness! We are used to chaos.
If we are looking for fairness, we will not be focusing only on the hostess or the airline, but also on the lady who broke the rule. Fairness means everyone must be punished for what side they did wrong. The airline staff that leaked the already cut portion of the first video is at the heart of this.
I noticed that the first video released by the airline did not contain her exposed body before the second video, which sparked outrage, was released. Many citizens originally were condemning the lady from the first video until the second came out.
Fairness will mean we have to ask who leaked the uncensored second video? (The minister noted this in first press release. ) This is why many people felt the outrage and not her action, which was already wrong and could have gotten her a charge.
But in a bid to express our disdain for that portion of the video, we are acting like she was a victim who was just molested for no reason. In the end, everything turn to content creation and portray us as an unserious nation.
If we want fairness, we must have consistency in condemning what is wrong regardless of our indignation. If we do not do this, some people will break the law at will and resort to this drama to get themselves off the hook, and society at large will be chaotic. Indeed, this is why Nigeria is the jungle it is today. We focus only on outrage and not the core issue that must be addressed to ensure that it does not repeat itself again.
I mentioned this under the K1 issue as well, and I predicted that as a result of our selective call for justice, nothing would come out of the cases. This case and the subsequent press release have validated my position. Now the minister has been pushed into freeing everyone so there may be peace. Well, new controversy will be released soon and everyone will move on and fairness on this matter will rest in peace.
In a normal situation where fairness is the real goal, everyone involved must be punished for their error. K1 for obstructing the plane, the pilot for starting the plane, Comfort for breaking the rule, the staff who released the uncensored video for violating privacy law (ironically, Nigeria has a law against this that can get him to jail), the airline for not controlling their staff, and the hostess, for her own side where proven.
That is the real meaning of fairness in my book; fairness is not leaving one aggressor to focus on another aggressor. It is getting everyone to pay for their side of the error.
American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson put my position more succinctly when he said there are three types of truth: the Personal truth (what you hold true to yourself), the Political truth (what society holds true), and the Objective truth (what the universe holds true).
If we embrace objective truth, the country will never be this hard.
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