Published 4th Aug, 2022

By Emmanuel Uti

Omotunde Akiode, a screenwriter, has recounted how RwandAir breached her human rights and cost her the opportunity to complete the 2022 Episodic Lab (EPL) and Development Executive Traineeship (DET) hosted by the Realness Institute in South Africa.

She told FIJ that after missing two flights due to visa issues, RwandAir spoiled the last chance she had to attend the training.

Akiode said that the Realness Institute paid RwandAir for her to catch up with the programme because she missed the first two flights booked for her.

She said that when she got to the Murtala Mohammed International Airport (MMIA) on July 26, a RwandAir attendant looked through her travel documents and discovered that she already had a return ticket with another airline. He then said that she could only fly if she had a return ticket with them and asked her to appeal to the station manager for help.

“It didn’t sit well with me because I already had my ticket. I got angry and started making a video, which I posted to Twitter,” Akiode told FIJ.

“I recorded how RwandAir attendants insisted that I had to buy a return ticket from them before they let me fly, even though I had one.”

Akiode said that the video she took got the attention of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) security officials and the RwandAir station manager.

She said that they invited her to their office, and immediately she got there, the story took a new turn.

The screenwriter said that the FAAN officials she met ordered her to delete the video on her phone, which she did with little hesitation.

“As I was about to step out of the office, they refused to let me leave the office. They claimed that recording a video was an issue and that the police must be involved,” she said.

“At this time, my flight was boarding, and none of them was concerned about it. They took me to their crime unit and kept me there for hours until the RwandAir manager came in.”

She said the manager fabricated lies to make it impossible for her to leave. Akiode said he claimed that he had only tried to explain to her that she could be sent back to Lagos if she arrived in South Africa, whereas she had not seen him until then.

Afterwards, a FAAN official picked her up alongside the RwandAir manager in a truck to Blisam Police Station, Akiodu said.

“In the police station, the RwandAir manager claimed that I was disrupting operations in the airport, but this was a lie because he was not there and neither did I disrupt anything,” she said.

“I got no opportunity to speak or defend myself. They kept lying against me and threatening me. They made me take the video down from my Twitter account.

“The police then forced me to make another video, saying that the first video was not true, but people barely believed it because I looked stressed in it. They made me write an apology letter.”

Akiode said the manager asked her to return the following day for him to put her on a flight but on a condition.

“He said I would sign an injunction that if I got sent back, I would buy a RwandAir ticket. I had already missed more of the programme, so I got tired,” she said.

“I also didn’t trust the airline with the way he treated me, so I decided not to go. That was how I missed the programme.”

When FIJ called FAAN via a number of theirs displayed on Google, the responder said that she could not confirm the incident.

FIJ also reached out to RwandAir, but their line did not connect. At press time, they had not responded to an email sent to them.

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