The Federal Government has clarified why Comfort Emmanson, a female passenger accused of assaulting Ibom Air crew members, was remanded in custody, while Fuji music icon Wasiu Ayinde, popularly known as Kwam 1, who allegedly disrupted a ValueJet flight in Abuja last week, did not face court action.
The Ibom Air incident, which occurred on the Uyo–Lagos route on Sunday, has sparked widespread outrage and claims of selective justice in Nigeria’s aviation sector.
Speaking on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Tuesday, the Director of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection at the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Mike Achimugu, stressed that the two cases were fundamentally different.
“There is no comparison here; it’s not a case of oranges and oranges. In the Kwam 1 incident, the airline did not activate its rights to take the passenger to court, so the NCAA did what it was supposed to do by petitioning the authorities. In the Ibom Air incident, maybe because their staff had been assaulted, the airline immediately activated its right to take up the matter, and it went to court,” Achimugu explained.
He further clarified that the NCAA was not directly involved in Emmanson’s prosecution, but in Kwam 1’s case, the Authority issued an advisory to the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) to ban the singer from flights.
Achimugu also revealed that, contrary to earlier reports, Kwam 1 was not given a six-month ban but an indefinite suspension pending the outcome of investigations.
On Emmanson’s no-fly sanction, he stated that airline operators have the legal authority to place such lifetime bans on passengers who breach aviation safety and operational rules.
This explanation comes amid mounting calls for consistent application of rules to all air passengers, regardless of social status or public profile.
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