10th July 2008: PRESS RELEASE FROM RESPECT NIGERIANS COALITION
Ayodeji Omotade Charged by the British Police
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press,
On Friday, 4 July, 2008, Mr Ayodeji Omotade kept a long-standing appointment with the British Police at Heathrow Police Station where he was formally charged with the offence of threatening /abusive/insulting/disorderly behaviour towards a member of the crew of the aircraft “CONTRARY TO ARTICLES 78(B) AND 148(5) OF, AND PART A OF SCHEDULE 14 TO THE AIR NAVIGATION ORDER 2005 MADE UNDER SECTION 60 AND 61 OF THE CIVIL AVIATION ACT 1982”. He’s now on bail and due to appear at Uxbridge Magistrates Court on Monday, 14 July, 2008. Omotade is already being represented by a law firm, Stephen Fidler & Co and they were there with him on the day he was charged.
First, we need to point out that though it is a criminal offence, it is only punishable by a fine on conviction. Any person convicted under the provision specified in Part A of Schedule 14 of the Air Navigation Order 2005 is only subject to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale. Level 4 on the standard scale is £2,500 (two thousand five hundred pounds), which means Omotade, if found guilty, could be fined from between £200 (Level 1) to £2,500 (Level 4) and would have a criminal record against his name. We have full confidence in his lawyers. All he needs from us at this point and hereafter is the support we have been giving him from day one.
It is important also to remind ourselves that the police had earlier investigated Mr Omotade on a presumptive charge of being in possession of money that is proceeds of crime. They even obtained a further ninety days extension order from a Magistrates Court to hold on to the money seized from him on the plane. This was obviously an oppressive act, as the money was clearly nothing to raise eyebrows, being only £1,613.00 (one thousand, six hundred and thirteen pounds) - money Mr Omotade, a respectable Telecommunications and Information Technology Contractor, was able to instantly account for. Mr Omotade provided the police with every proof they needed to establish that he’s a model citizen who earns his money legitimately. The police were possibly baffled by the fact that here is one Nigerian on whom they could pin nothing. So, they had no choice but to finally hand back his money a few weeks ago. But clearly, they were not satisfied with that outcome. They still had to find something to pin on Mr Omotade. And that is where this new charge comes in.
Respect Nigerians Coalition (RNC) hereby condemn, in unequivocal terms, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the British Police for this oppressive and provocative act of charging Mr Ayodeji Omotade for an offence they fully know he didn’t commit. While it is trite to say Ayodeji Omotade will have his day in court to establish his innocence, we venture to say that there is already enough evidence to indicate that the charge was unnecessary as the account of what happened on the day has been told and retold in the public space. Mr Omotade himself was the victim of police brutality and high-handedness. He was the one publicly and thoroughly humiliated - dragged out of the plane, slammed against the wall, beaten, bundled into a police van, arrested and detained for almost eight hours for no just cause. Mr Omotade was prevented from travelling to Nigeria and therefore could not attend his brother’s wedding. BA banned him without refunding even his ticket money and his luggage was returned, damaged, more than a week after.
We are of the strong view that Mr Omotade is being prosecuted primarily to keep him on a leash and bury the whole matter in a judicial process that the police themselves know will go nowhere. But for them and British Airways, it is a cynical decision to buy time. It is aimed at giving the impression (at least in the meantime) that BA has a genuine ground for complaint. Now, how can this be when time and time again, BA’s lies have been exposed both in the British and the Nigerian press? We all recall the Press Statement BA issued in Nigeria on the 1st of May 2008, claiming that their crew were subjected to physical assault by the passengers. We pointed out at the time that throughout the wide coverage of this affair in the British media for over two months prior to the release of their Statement, BA had ample opportunity to state this (if it was indeed the case), but never did. We pointed out that the police who attended the scene never received a report to this effect and never took any statement from any member of staff supposedly physically assaulted. The fact that the police are not charging Mr Omotade or any other passenger for physical assault has vindicated us absolutely.
However, charging Omotade for the lesser offence of threatening and abusive behaviour towards a member of staff has exposed further the dishonesty of the police and BA. It shows their untoward eagerness to hang something on Omotade’s head in a desperate attempt to give undeserved credence to BA’s conduct on the day, because they realise that letting Mr Omotade walk free will fully expose BA and their staff to a potential charge of giving false statements to the police under Section 5 of the Perjury Act 1911. They know that our Campaign is based on exposing BA’s lies. So, they want to convict Omotade on a trumped-up charge as a message to Nigerians who think they can come into their planes and seek to be respected as fare-paying customers. Mr Omotade is being held hostage by the British authorities because he dared to challenge the dehumanizing treatment meted out to a Nigerian, Mr Augustine Eme who was the deportee being brutalized in the plane. He is being punished and would, if they have their way, shortly be collared with a criminal record, because he voiced the fears of his countrymen and women by pleading with barbarous British immigration and security personnel torturing and suffocating a helpless Mr Eme.
Mr Omotade was not trying to be a hero. He was only trying to be his brother’s keeper because, as an informed and well-travelled Nigerian, he is aware that many Nigerians have been killed like dogs in similar circumstances. In August 1994, Mr Kola Bankole was tortured, bound, gagged and injected with a large dose of sedative by the German police in an attempt to deport him. He died at Frankfurt Airport from heart failure. No police officer was charged or prosecuted. In September 1998, Semira Adamu, a 20-year old Nigerian lady was asphyxiated by Belgian police while being deported. There was huge political fallout from this in Belgium, but the bottom line is that Semira and her family are yet to receive justice up till this day. In May 1999, Mr Marcus Omofuma (25) was “taped like a parcel” and suffocated to death by Austrian police in an attempt to deport him. Despite the overwhelming evidence, it took three years to bring the three police officers from the Vienna Unit of the Foreigners’ Police to court only to be declared not guilty. In May, 2001, Swiss police officers asphyxiated Mr Samson Chukwu (27) in the course of trying to deport him and, again, in spite of the overwhelming evidence, the Swiss authorities simply refused to prosecute their murderous officers. The latest is the case of Osamuyia Aikpitanhi, a 23-year old Nigerian killed by Spanish immigration authorities in June last year, again, in the name of deportation. As we speak, Mr Aikpitanhi’s body is still lying somewhere in Spain, his family unable to have closure, because of the shenanigans of Iberian Airline and the Spanish authorities. All the dead here were young Nigerians, like Mr Augustine Eme. Mr Omotade’s crime is that he appealed to the humanity in these people to treat the man with a little dignity.
Respect Nigerians Coalition (RNC) is hereby also accusing the British government of complicity in the stigmatization of Mr Ayodeji Omotade and Nigerians. This is clear from the role played by Mr Robert Dewar the British High Commissioner in Nigeria. On Thursday, 24 April, 2008, the High Commissioner met with the Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Ojo Maduekwe who expressed outrage over the treatment of Nigerians by British Airways and the British security services on that flight. Dewar assured the Minister that he was investigating the matter and would get back to the Nigerian government once he gets more information. On Wednesday, 4 June, 2008 the High Commissioner was reported in the Nigerian Guardian newspaper as saying the British government has issued British Airways a query over the incident and that the latter has submitted a report to the British government. Without telling us the content of this report or the decision of the British government, Mr Dewar then went on to apologise to the Federal Government of Nigeria over the incident in question when he paid a courtesy visit to the Nigerian Minister of Information and Communications, Mr John Odey. But Mr Dewar was not done until he publicly repeated the same lies being peddled by British Airways.
It should be noted that government activities over the issue began earlier in late April with the Nigerian President, Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua directing the Nigerian Minister of Aviation, Mr Felix Hyatt to look into the matter from his hospital bed in Germany. The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) was also at the time holding talks with British Airways about the incident with reports saying a compensation package was being negotiated for the passengers affected. Indeed, at that point, we were entitled to think that some kind of bilateral effort was in the pipeline to sort out the matter. We therefore resolved to scale down our campaign and give this seeming effort a chance. We then wrote the UK-based shareholders of the company who are preparing to attend BA’s Annual General Meeting at the QEII Conference Centre, Westminster, London on Tuesday, July 15, 2008, urging them to use the opportunity to make their top management do the right thing by Nigerians and humanity. We were confident that between the Nigerian and British governments and the socially conscious shareholders of the corporation, they were going to prevail upon the management of the airline to make the necessary apology and put this affair behind us. The prosecution of Mr Omotade has proved we were mistaken.
We have demanded in our first Statement on this issue that BA withdraws all adverse statements made about Omotade to the police. The fact that Omotade is now being charged by the police clearly indicates that those adverse statements have not been withdrawn. In fact, more of them may have possibly been given the police. The fact that the police are charging him after three whole months, and for such a minor offence, clearly indicates also that they have nothing tangible on Omotade, but are only intent on holding him down with a judicial process that will be a waste of British public funds just to satisfy BA and give credibility to their lies (at least while still in court).This also indicates that Mr Dewar’s attempt at diplomacy was deceptive, because if indeed he was interested in a bilateral settlement of the matter as indicated in his apology to the Federal Government on behalf of BA, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) would not have charged Ayodeji Omotade. Therefore, what we have here is the British government using the police and Crown Prosecution Service to protect a corporate flag-bearer, even where it is obvious that the latter has acted in a shameful and disgraceful manner. It is obviously their reasoning that if Ayodeji Omotade is charged with something, no matter how trivial, BA’s insistence that they acted out of real concern for the safety of the passengers and the crew would be given a veneer of credibility and the charge and conviction of Omotade, no matter how much he’s fined by the court, will scare off the other affected passengers and those who support them.
But we cannot be intimidated. We firmly believe in the rightness of our cause, because an injustice to one is an injustice to all. In fact, following the charging of Ayodeji Omotade, Respect Nigerians Coalition (RNC) has since escalated the campaign. We have already called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to temporarily withdraw BA’s licence and suspend all its operations in the country immediately until the case against Omotade is determined conclusively. This is the only way BA will understand that we are serious. It is no news that they have acted in very disrespectful manner towards the Nigerian president and the Nigerian government by consistently aborting or ignoring every attempt at resolving the issue. The actions of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the British government indicate clearly on whose side they are. We have also submitted a Petition to the Nigerian National Assembly asking them to make a declaration that no state money should be spent on buying British Airways tickets (or any of its goods and services) for state officials nationwide until the outcome of this case.
The irony is that the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua is due to arrive in the United Kingdom on his first state visit between Tuesday, 15 July, 2008 and Friday, 18 July, 2008, that is a day after Ayodeji Omotade’s court appearance on trumped-up charges. We would expect him to let his hosts know that they are prosecuting Ayodeji Omotade in bad faith. This is about giving BA time to continue pretending it has a legitimate reason for its ignoble conduct of March 27, 2008. Everyone in that aircraft knows that Mr Ayodeji Omotade never at any time threatened or abused anyone. He was the one that was manhandled and dehumanized for daring to plead with the British immigration and security officers torturing a Nigerian in the name of deportation. Indeed, it was the injustice meted out to Omotade that led to other passengers complaining. It is obvious that the police are doing this in an attempt to help BA avoid accepting responsibility for its actions on the day. They are trying to intimidate Ayodeji Omotade, the 135 other passengers on the flight and campaigning Nigerians and well-wishers of Nigeria who feel aggrieved and disgusted about the airline’s racist and discriminatory conduct. If the Yar’Adua government really believes in its doctrine of citizen diplomacy, this is the time to use such diplomacy to defend its citizen being wrongly prosecuted. There is no better time to make that statement than during this first state visit to the United Kingdom. Ayodeji Omotade is a first-class patriot and citizen who has showed courage and discipline throughout this affair. This is the time for the Nigerian government, the Nigerian people and all decent humanity to stand by him and by all the Nigerian passengers on that plane on the day.
We are calling on the press to once again rise up to the occasion here. This story has been out there from day one and you have kept it in national and international consciousness in one form or the other. British Airways, despite its huge public relations budget, has not been able to deodorise itself successfully! Their filthy reputation is no more news, but here they are declaring abominable profits in the face of our collective moral onslaught! Who will bell this stinking cat? Who will stop this corporate tyranny? Who will teach British Airways that it pays to be a good corporate citizen wherever it does business?
We can only do our bit; we count on you to continue doing yours. Give voice to our voicelessness. We must never drown!
Thank you.
Signed:
Nosa Olotu
Tosin Awotesu
Hassan Abubakar
