The Searchlight Journal

Beyond One Killing: Why ASP Usman’s Past Must Be Investigated

A. John Ukpe, PhD

The killing of Mene Ogidi, a 28-year-old young man, in the hands of ASP Muhammad Nuhu Usman is too grave to be treated as a routine case of misconduct. It raises a troubling question that cannot be ignored: was this an isolated act, or the visible tip of a deeper pattern of abuse that has gone undetected?

Acts of violence of this nature do not always emerge suddenly. They often evolve—hidden at first, unchallenged, and gradually emboldened by silence or complicity. It is therefore both reasonable and necessary for the authorities to look beyond the immediate incident and examine the officer’s past conduct. A thorough, transparent investigation into ASP Usman’s service record, prior assignments, complaints, and use-of-force history should be undertaken without delay. Such a review is not a presumption of guilt; it is a duty owed to the public and to the integrity of the police institution.

Equally important is the role of his colleagues. Those who served alongside him may hold critical information—observations, concerns, or incidents that were overlooked or never formally reported. They should be encouraged, and where necessary compelled, to testify honestly. A culture of silence only deepens institutional failure; a culture of accountability restores trust.

This is not about targeting an individual alone; it is about confronting the possibility of systemic weakness. If there were warning signs, they must be identified. If there were earlier victims, their stories must be brought to light. And if there were failures in oversight, they must be corrected.

Justice for Mene Ogidi demands more than a prosecution—it demands truth. And that truth can only emerge if we are willing to ask the harder question: not just what happened, but what may have been happening all along.

INSIDE TRUMP’S PARDON ECONOMY

By David Remnick, Editor of The New Yorker

During their respective first years in office, Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Joe Biden issued precisely zero pardons. In Donald Trump’s first, he pardoned just one person, the Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. In the first year of his second term, Trump pardoned roughly sixteen hundred (1,600).

Among those who’ve received pardons or commutations from the President in his second term are: the former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich; the former congressman George Santos; the reality-TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley; the billionaire Binance founder Changpeng Zhao; and Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the online black market Silk Road. The actor Mel Gibson got his gun rights reinstated. And these are just the high-profile recipients of Presidential mercy: Trump also pardoned around fifteen hundred January 6th defendants on his first day back in office, including one who sprayed a police officer with bear repellent, and another who shocked an officer with a Taser, giving him a heart attack.

The President is offering clemency at an unprecedented rate, the New Yorker contributing writer Ruth Marcus reports in this week’s issue. “Nothing on Trump’s scale has ever happened at any point in American history, period. Full stop, not debatable,” Frank Bowman, an emeritus law professor at the University of Missouri who recently completed a book about pardon history, tells her. And it’s created an entire pay-to-play economy: pardon seekers and their families are often shelling out million-dollar-plus fees to lobbyists and consultants who tout their connections with the President, in hopes of securing the mercy of the White House. “Every one of my clients is being approached by these scumbags,” one prominent criminal-defense lawyer told our reporter. “They say who they’re friends with. It’s often White House counsel. And they ask for a million dollars and another million dollars if it’s successful.”(The White House denies that money plays any role in Trump’s clemency decisions.)

For decades, Ruth Marcus covered legal affairs for the Washington Post; she joined The New Yorker in 2025. Over months of reporting, Marcus spoke with dozens of clemency recipients, lawyers, historians, and the consultants offering clients their pardon expertise. She recounts stories of suspiciously well-timed decisions by Trump, including that of a Florida businessman whose pardon was granted just weeks after his mother attended a million-dollar-per-head “candlelit dinner” at Mar-a-Lago, where she, according to one person familiar with the event, made a case on his behalf to the President. Marcus’s investigation is as shocking as it is thorough. It is also a reminder of just how much the American justice system has been transformed by President Trump, in order to benefit his interests and his allies.

Justice has spoken, and it deserves to be acknowledged. Accountability is not optional—it is the backbone of any sane society.

No one has the right to brand another human being a murderer without credible evidence. Words are not harmless; accusations are not entertainment. When falsehood is dressed as truth, it destroys reputations, distorts public discourse, and erodes the very fabric of justice.

And those who choose to lie must also be prepared to face the consequences of those lies.

This judgment is more than a personal victory for one man; it is a clear signal to a culture increasingly intoxicated by unverified claims and reckless commentary. It reminds us that the courtroom still stands as a place where truth is tested, not trending hashtags.

For the growing army of social media opportunists who trade in sensationalism to gain followers, this is a moment of reckoning. Influence is not a license for irresponsibility. Freedom of expression does not include freedom to defame.

Truth matters. Evidence matters. And accountability, sooner or later, always comes calling.

The Day the Law Overruled the Arena

Sport loses its meaning the moment victory can be reassigned after it has been earned.

To understand the present controversy in African football, imagine a scene from the boxing ring. Two fighters—Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield—are locked in combat. The stakes are high. The crowd is electric. Then, in the heat of the contest, Holyfield—angered by a referee’s decision—steps out of the ring. There is confusion. Officials intervene. He is persuaded to return.

The fight resumes. And then, decisively, emphatically, Holyfield knocks Tyson out. The crowd erupts. The contest, by every visible standard, has been settled. But imagine what follows.

Tyson rises—not to contest the knockout, not to challenge the blows—but to appeal to a Boxing Appeal Panel. His argument is simple: his opponent stepped out of the ring earlier; therefore, the match should be awarded to him.

And the panel agrees. Tyson is declared the winner. What would such a decision sound like?

It would sound absurd. It would sound like a parody of justice. It would sound like the law has not merely intervened in sport, but has replaced reality with procedure.

Yet this is precisely the philosophical dilemma now confronting African football - no thanks to CAF.

Every sport requires rules. Without them, competition descends into chaos. But rules exist for a purpose—to protect the integrity of the contest, not to undermine it. When a game has been played, when a contest has been decided through skill, endurance, and performance, there emerges what may be called sporting truth—a truth witnessed, felt, and accepted by all who saw it.

Legal systems, however, operate differently. They are concerned with procedure, compliance, and technical breaches. Their language is not emotion, but regulation. The crisis arises when these two systems collide. When legal formalism overrides sporting reality, the result is not justice—it is dissonance.

To award victory to a competitor who did not win in the arena is to alter the fundamental meaning of competition. Victory, in sport, is not an administrative conclusion. It is an earned outcome. When that outcome is reassigned after the fact, it weakens trust, diminishes effort, and elevates technicalities above merit. The game, in such a case, risks becoming not a contest of ability, but a contest of interpretation.

Every sport possesses not only rules, but a spirit—an unwritten code that governs fairness, honour, and legitimacy. In boxing, the principle is simple: the fighter who prevails in the ring wins. In football, the principle is equally clear: matches are decided on the pitch. These are not mere traditions; they are the moral foundation of sport itself. To depart from them is not merely to reinterpret rules—it is to redefine the meaning of competition.

The role of any appeal panel, whether in boxing or football, is not to supplant the contest, but to safeguard it. Law must remain the servant of sport, not its master. When law begins to produce outcomes that contradict the lived reality of the game, it risks losing legitimacy. For legitimacy in sport does not come from statutes alone—it comes from alignment with what is seen, understood, and accepted as fair.

The question, therefore, is not whether rules should be applied. They must be. The question is whether they should be applied in a manner that preserves the integrity of competition—or in a manner that nullifies it.

For if a knockout can be overturned by a prior procedural breach, then the meaning of victory itself becomes uncertain. And when victory becomes uncertain, sport itself is diminished.

The imagined Tyson–Holyfield scenario is not merely a story. It is a mirror. It reflects a deeper tension in modern sport—the tension between what is decided in the arena and what is determined in the courtroom.

If sport is to retain its credibility, its administrators must ensure that law does not drift too far from reality. For when the contest is finished, when the result is clear, there must remain one simple, unassailable truth: The winner is the one who won.

Anything else, no matter how legally defensible, risks sounding not like justice—but like absurdity.

ON THE CORRUPTION IN CAF

Patrice Motsepe says there is no corruption in Confederation of African Football (CAF). That is a reassuring claim. But it raises an obvious question: when a match has been played, concluded, won on the field and the trophy handed over to the winners by CAF, yet the result is later awarded to the team that actually lost, what exactly should that be called? Should we call it abracadabra?

Football has always been built on a simple principle—matches are decided on the pitch. When administrative decisions overturn two what happened in ninety minutes of play two months after, the credibility of the game inevitably comes under scrutiny.

Perhaps CAF has its explanations and regulations. But to ordinary football fans, such outcomes raise troubling questions about fairness, transparency, and integrity. If that is not corruption, then CAF owes the public a clear explanation of what it is.

AMAECHI: LETTING SLEEPING LIES LIE

Rotimi Amaechi has a very touching—but very familiar—story. Familiar because it sounds like that fable many of us heard in our youth: that four corner kicks make one goal in football. Not only is it a lie, but some lies are so extravagant that they make you question the psychology of the liar.

He claims that if President Tinubu wins a second term, he could “damage Abuja” and even move the Federal Capital Territory to Lagos. Vintage Amaechi! He has the uncanny ability to juggle allegations and falsehoods with more dexterity than Jay-Jay Okocha once juggled a football. He appears to believe that ignorance is the o***m of the masses and that, with enough confidence, one can get away with anything—anything at all.

Let us remember that this is the same Amaechi who, in 2015, confidently announced to the nation that the Jonathan government paid ₦6 billion to churches and Christian leaders to support him in the election—six billion, not the kind of money that can be disbursed quietly without leaving a trail as thick as the fumes from a diesel-powered generator in a blackout.

Naturally, Nigerians asked the obvious questions: Which churches? Which pastors? Where are the transfers? Where are the receipts? Some pastors even played into his hands by denying knowledge of the money. But you do not deny fiction; when you do, you risk promoting it into the realm of reality.

Till today, not a single name, document, bank alert, or shred of evidence has surfaced. Not one pastor. Not one church. Not one kobo traced. But, good, old Amaechi had done his yeoman’s job and, for his troubles, bagged a ministerial appointment for what could only be described as a rather dubious display of “genius.”

Now he returns with an even more outrageous tale, apparently convinced—like you-know-who—that Nigerians are gullible and hungry enough to swallow anything. But one simple question remains unanswered: How exactly does one pack Abuja into a moving truck and relocate it to Lagos?

Unfortunately, this is not a question Amaechi is likely to answer. He is far too busy concocting fresh “moonlight” tales to explain the old ones already floating in the political atmosphere. And so he would rather let sleeping lies lie…and move on.

Samir Bennis Lied: Morocco Does Not Have the Law on Its Side

Bennis’s argument raises important legal principles, but there are critical points that must be clarified from a sports law and procedural justice perspective.

First, the central issue is not merely the literal reading of Article 82, but whether the appropriate provision of the regulations was applied at the appropriate time. From the facts available, it appears that Article 8—which governs the specific conduct in question—was not invoked when it should have been invoked during the match or immediately after the alleged incident. In legal and disciplinary proceedings, the correct rule must be applied at the time the infraction occurs. Once a competition authority proceeds under a different framework and the match is concluded, it becomes extremely difficult to revisit the matter under a separate provision.

Second, laws and disciplinary rules are not applied retroactively. This is a well-established principle in both general jurisprudence and sports arbitration. A sanctioning body cannot ignore a relevant rule during the proceedings, allow a match to be completed, allow the competition to conclude, award the title, and then later attempt to reconstruct the legal basis for sanction by applying a different article after the fact. CAS has repeatedly emphasized legal certainty and procedural fairness in sports competitions.

Third, the competition itself was completed and CAF formally awarded the trophy to Senegal. That is an official act of the governing body. Senegal did not seize or “steal” the trophy; it was awarded through the recognized authority responsible for administering the competition. Any attempt to reverse such an outcome must overcome the very high threshold of proving a clear misapplication of the regulations at the time the decision was made, not merely a disagreement over how the rules might have been interpreted later.

Consider this instructive analogy about a university student. Imagine that a student was involved in a fight during his third year. The university investigates—or chooses not to sanction him—and he continues his studies, completes his programme, graduates, and receives his certificate. Years later, after he has even finished his national service, the university suddenly asks him to return his certificate because of that fight in his third year. The university argues that, under its regulations, fighting automatically leads to expulsion.

No serious legal system would consider such an action justifiable. The issue is not whether fighting violates the university’s rules—the issue is when and how the rule should have been applied. If the regulation prescribes automatic expulsion, then the sanction ought to have been imposed at the time the misconduct occurred, or at least within the disciplinary process that immediately followed the incident. Once the university allowed the student to proceed through the remainder of his studies, graduate, and be formally awarded a certificate, the matter is considered concluded. Attempting to reopen it years later would violate fundamental principles of due process, legal certainty, and non-retroactivity of sanctions.

This is precisely why the principle that laws and disciplinary provisions cannot be applied retroactively is deeply embedded in both general jurisprudence and sports law. Rules must be applied when the infraction occurs, not reconstructed after events have been concluded.

Applied to the present matter, the match in question was completed, the competition concluded, and the governing body officially awarded the trophy to Senegal. Senegal did not seize or “steal” the cup; it was formally awarded by CAF, the competent authority. If a particular provision—such as Article 8—ought to have been invoked, it should have been applied at the relevant time during the disciplinary process, not after the competition had run its course.

Therefore, the central legal question is not the reputation of the lawyers involved, but whether the regulatory framework was properly applied at the appropriate stage of the proceedings. Once a competition authority allows a match to stand and awards the title, overturning that outcome later requires overcoming the powerful legal principles of finality of decisions, procedural fairness, and the prohibition against retroactive sanctions.

Slavery, Memory, and the Politics of Moral Accounting

On March 25, 2026, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade and the chattel enslavement of Africans “the gravest crime against humanity.” Introduced by Ghana, the resolution passed with 123 votes in favor. Three countries voted against it: United States, Israel, and Argentina. Fifty-two others abstained.

The vote highlights one of the enduring paradoxes of modern political memory: the nation (US) that derived the greatest economic benefit from slavery was against the international attempt to formally recognize or morally reckon with it. Equally revealing was the decision of many European states—whose traders, ships, and imperial networks once sustained the trade—to abstain rather than cast a vote that might force a direct confrontation with their own history.

For more than three centuries, the Atlantic world revolved around a vast and brutal commercial enterprise. Over twelve million Africans were captured, transported across the ocean under horrific conditions, and sold as property. Millions more died during capture or perished along the dreadful journey across the Atlantic.

The labor of the enslaved cultivated to***co, rice, sugar, and above all cotton—the commodity that became the cornerstone of the American export economy in the nineteenth century. Slavery did not merely coexist with American prosperity; it helped create it. It was one of the engines that powered it.

Yet when slavery formally ended in 1865, the former slaves received something that was both monumental and tragically insufficient: freedom without capital, liberation without compensation.

There was no meaningful redistribution of land for blacks. The brief promise of “forty acres and a mule,” which flickered momentarily during Reconstruction, vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. It never materialized though Lincoln had initially promised it. Millions of freed slaves entered economic life without property, financial support, or institutional protection.

The contrast with other groups who later settled in the United States is striking. Through policies such as the Homestead Act of 1862, the federal government distributed hundreds of millions of acres of public land to settlers—virtually free. Waves of immigrants from Europe and Asia were able to acquire land, receive settlement support, and participate in the expanding opportunities of a developing nation - again, virtually free. The descendants of enslaved Africans, by contrast, were largely excluded from this vast national distribution of opportunity.

Freedom was followed by a second chapter of institutionalized disadvantage. Through the regime of Jim Crow laws, African Americans were denied equal access to schools, voting rights, economic opportunity, and the protections of the law. The Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson enshrined segregation under the grotesque fiction of “separate but equal.” History has shown that the separation was real; the equality was not.

Even after the civil rights revolution dismantled legal segregation, the racist shadow of those institutions persisted in subtler but enduring forms—economic disparities, housing discrimination, unequal access to opportunity, and structural disadvantages that continue to shape American society.
The 2026 UN resolution does not resolve these questions, nor can it. Its practical consequences remain uncertain. But its symbolic intention is unmistakable: to affirm that the transatlantic slave trade stands among the greatest crimes recorded in human history.

The refusal of the United States to support the resolution raises questions that history has not yet answered. How should nations address injustices that contributed to their wealth and power? What responsibility does the present bear for the crimes of the past? And can genuine reconciliation occur without recognition, accountability, and repair? These are not merely political questions. They are questions about the moral architecture of civilization itself.

Nations, like individuals, construct narratives that make their histories intelligible. Some narratives emphasize triumph; others dwell on tragedy. The most honest histories acknowledge both. The story of slavery in America lies at that uneasy intersection where national achievement and national failure coexist. To recognize this complexity is not to diminish US’s accomplishments. It is to confront the full weight of its inheritance.

History rarely offers simple moral arithmetic. But it does demand clarity. And clarity begins with remembering—and with the courage to accept responsibility for what memory reveals.

The Judge and the Game She Does Not Understand

It appears that the good people of football have lately discovered— with the astonishment of a man who opens his refrigerator and finds a live snake — that the fate of their beloved sport now rests in the hands of an honourable lady judge of Nigerian extraction who may not possess the faintest acquaintance with the game.

This discovery has been greeted with howls of disbelief, as though it were some scandal that a judge should be unfamiliar with the sacred rituals of twenty-two men chasing an inflated piece of leather while millions of others shout themselves hoarse before glowing screens. Her recent intervention—annulling a final two months after it was played and handing victory to the team that had already lost—has struck the football fraternity like a bolt from Olympus.

But let us be fair to the learned lady. Judges are not hired because they can tell the difference between a striker and a goalkeeper, or between a centre referee and a team mascot. There is no course in football in law faculties. Judges are hired because they can tell the difference between the spirit and letter of a rule — which in Nigeria, as history repeatedly demonstrates, is a far more complicated sport than eating amala with ewedu soup.

One must imagine that on the day of the famous final she was occupied with far more serious matters. Perhaps she was out shopping. Perhaps she was having her hair done. Perhaps she was listening to the news about wars, avalanches, economic crises, and other minor inconveniences that afflict the globe. It is even possible — though this must be whispered carefully among football devotees — that she did not know the cup had already been awarded to somebody by CAF and they were congratulated by CAF.

To the football world, the annulment of a completed final two months after the fact is sacrilege. But to a Nigerian jurist it is merely Tuesday in a world too obsessed with wars to care about inflated leather.

After all, we are citizens of a country whose legal minds once perfected the advanced mathematics of “two-thirds of nineteen states.” In that celebrated calculation of the 1983 Presidential Election, arithmetic itself was persuaded to behave politically. As the distinguished Richard Akinjide famously explained, this was mathematics for politicians, not mathematicians. If numbers can be persuaded to bend like that, surely a football result can endure a little stretching.

And then there was the historic jurisprudence of June 12 — when an election already conducted, counted, announced, and joyfully celebrated was calmly folded like a newspaper and placed back into the drawer of history. If a presidential election in which millions participated can vanish in broad daylight, what — in the majestic scale of Nigerian legal imagination — is a football match? What is in an inflated leather! To the judge, this is pure nonsense and ingredient (as Chief Zebrudaya would put it).

A football match, after all, is merely twenty-two men running about in expensive boots kicking a ball that was once a respectable piece of cowhide. For this activity they earn salaries capable of making a High Court judge blink twice and check whether the decimal point has wandered off. Some of them earn in one month what a judge may not earn in her entire career. So what is the fuss?

One can therefore understand the quiet temptation to restore some moral balance. Particularly for a jurist who may have spent a lifetime reading affidavits while watching young men grow wealthy by chasing livestock derivatives across manicured grass.

Indeed, some might even blame the entire controversy on the day the match was played. The final occurred on a Sunday — a day historically reserved for prayer, reflection, and activities that do not involve kicking the remains of cattle around a lawn. In certain strict circles this alone might qualify football as a suspiciously anti-church recreational programme. And now this...

To expect her to approach the matter with deep football knowledge would be unreasonable. It would be rather like asking an atheist to preside over a dispute between the Catholic Church and the Redeemed Christian Church of God. The atheist would approach the proceedings not with any understanding of ecclesiastical doctrine or church practice, but with puzzled detachment—and might well deliver a judgment aimed less at settling doctrine than at rescuing the world from what he regards as religious fanaticism. In this case Her Lordship may be seeking to deliver Africans from football fanaticism so that they can focus on technology.

Which, I believe from circumstantial evidence, is precisely what may have happened here. The learned lady examined the matter with the serene detachment of a jurist who does not know — and may not particularly care — whether a referee carries a whistle, a flute, or a saxophone. Whether the final whistle is an alarm, a bugle call, or merely an indication that the spectators should stop shouting.

And when she was done, the football world learned a profound lesson: In Nigeria, nothing is entirely safe from jurisprudence. Not even the match played to mark Nigeria’s Independence in 1960.

Indeed, Africans should be grateful that only one match has been annulled. Should other nations decide to appeal their own sporting grievances before the same judicial board — well, your guess is as good as mine. More heads will roll.

WHEN AIR PEACE BROKE THE PEACE!

“It is not possible! It is not possible!! My family is waiting for me in Calabar!!”

Clad in a pristine white nylon shirt and tight blue jeans, the fiery young woman cut a striking figure—like a Hollywood starlet caught in a dramatic outburst. Her forefinger stabbed the air as she charged toward her target: a hapless Air Peace employee who had just announced the cancellation of her Calabar-bound flight. Her narrowed eyes gleamed with indignation, and her movements were as forceful and unpredictable as a comet on a collision course.

The Abuja airport lounge, filled to capacity, was a chaotic scene, a cauldron of discontent boiling over with irate passengers. It was December 23, 2024—a day meant for holiday cheer but now etched in infamy as the day Air Peace shattered the fragile tranquility of Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport's domestic wing. The Calabar flight was originally scheduled for 11:20 a.m. With high hopes, I had even arranged a ferry for my onward journey to Akwa Ibom State through my friend and brother, Pastor Kelechi Chibuzor. Tickets in hand and waiting in Calabar, we were ready.

But the lords of air travel had other plans. The flight was rescheduled for 2:50 p.m. —a minor inconvenience, or so I thought. I promptly informed Pastor Chibuzor of the change, urging him to adjust accordingly.

As 1:50 p.m. approached, another ominous announcement shattered any sense of calm: the flight would now depart at 3:00 p.m. Anxiety gnawed at me as my dreams of a smooth transition to Akwa Ibom dimmed. Then came another delay—to 5:00 p.m. By the time the clock struck five, Jimbo, a gaunt young man clad in a kaftan appeared to deliver the final, crushing blow: the Calabar flight was canceled. His voice was as cold and detached as a judge delivering a death sentence.

His pronouncement had the same effect as detonating a gr***de - it ignited the crowd. Passengers who had endured hours of frustration now erupted in fury.

“You’ve kept us here all day, treating us like pawns in a chess game, only to tell us to go home and return tomorrow? Are we robots?” I thought, incredulous at the audacity of Air Peace.

The leader of the revolt—a fiery woman who could intimidate even the boldest among us—advanced toward the kaftan-clad man. He stammered something about poor visibility in Calabar.

“Nonsense!” the crowd roared in unison.

Hadn’t an Ibom Air flight departed just twenty minutes earlier? A woman of slight built, standing at few inches above five feet, her voice dripping with disdain, claimed her brother was stationed at the control tower in Calabar and had confirmed the recent arrival of an Aero Contractors flight at Margaret Ekpo International Airport, Calabar. The Air Peace employee, clearly trained in the art of flight cancellation damage control, struggled to maintain his composure. No one apparently informed him that passengers could mine such professional information.

“Visibility requirements differ,” he mumbled, his voice barely audible. “We need 3,000 meters of visibility to land. Other airlines may have different requirements.”

“Are you putting us in a hotel?” someone demanded, desperation lacing their voice.

The response was a resounding no.

“I paid N20,000 to get here. You expect me to spend ₦20,000 to get back to town, another ₦20,000 tomorrow, and return here again?” a passenger fumed.

A huge, towering woman (about six feet in her bare feet) with blazing eyes threatened the employee, declaring she had nine people in her company and would not hesitate to take drastic action. She promised to squeeze the life out of the man. Sensing imminent trouble, the man whispered urgently to an assistant, who scurried off to pacify her.

Meanwhile, the rest of the passengers were told to “bear with us.” This was met with a fresh wave of outrage. When someone demanded a refund, the response was equally maddening: “Refunds will be processed in 21 working days.”

“Fly us to Port Harcourt, then!” a man bellowed. “Don’t dare me, or you’ll lose some teeth.”

Others blocked the boarding gates, vowing no flights would leave until the issue was resolved.

“God punish you!” became the rallying cry, echoing through the terminal.

Amid the chaos, the Port Harcourt suggestion gained traction. Suddenly, the Air Peace representative announced that four passengers could be accommodated on the Port Harcourt flight, which was not fully booked. Desperate to escape the pandemonium, I rebooked seats for myself and my son.

By 10:00 p.m., an Airforce officer arrived with armed soldiers, promising hotels for the stranded passengers—a promise that felt more like a cruel joke at that point. After enduring six hours of turmoil, I finally boarded the Port Harcourt flight, escaping the hellscape of the airport lounge.

We arrived in Port Harcourt at midnight. Thanks to the swift arrangements made by my pastor, the amazing Dr. Sylvanus Ukafia, and our resident pastor in Uyo, Dr. Samuel Udoh, Pastor Joe Akpan, our pastor in Port Harcourt received us at this unholy hour at the airport. He booked us into a hotel in Port Harcourt by 2:00 a.m., where I collapsed into bed, exhausted and relieved.

As I lay there, my thoughts drifted to those we had left behind—victims of Air Peace’s incompetence.

“Have you lost your mind?” my friends chided when they heard of my ordeal. “Air Peace? Really? What were you thinking?”

I had heard rumors of their notorious flight cancellations but, as a man of faith, I ventured forth in optimism. However I blame myself. I had forgotten the wisdom of Matthew 17:21: “But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”

Next time—if there is a next time—I’ll fast and pray.