AIRLINES, FLIGHT DELAYS AND PASSENGER COMPENSATIONS

It is often said that time is money. Indeed, this holds really true because time squandered can never be regained. Sometimes, persons who fail or neglect to keep appointments or be on time for an appointment may thereby miss opportunities of a lifetime. Sometimes, the missed opportunity might not be the fault of that person. It might in fact be the fault of some other third parties who do not think that considerations for their customers/clients should form part of the service they are supposed to render. Let’s go the route of the airlines on this one today.

Airlines usually require passengers to check in for flights booked at least 50 minutes before departure and oftentimes, we have heard stories of passengers missing their flights not necessarily because the plane had taken off before they got to the airport, but because they came in several minutes after they were supposed to have checked in. There have in fact been stories of a particular airline in Nigeria which allows itself to be so over-booked online that sometimes when you turn up at 1 pm for a flight that is supposed to depart at 1.40 pm, you will be told that you have arrived too late!

In such situations, the missed flight and having to make arrangements for another flight are the passenger’s punishments for “late coming”. While the passenger however gets some form of punishment for coming late or even sometimes with an over-booked flight, for not coming early enough, the situation is very different with the airlines when they, for whatever reasons, cancel or delay their flights. We understand that airlines can sometimes be forced by reasons beyond their control such as really bad weather conditions to delay their flights or even totally cancel such flights until further notice. However, even in such situations, airlines owe their customers, the passengers, the duty of promptly informing them of their proposed action and the reason(s) for such actions.

Where however, the reasons for delaying or cancelling a flight has nothing to do with, say, the weather condition, then, it is only fair that the airline compensates the passengers who had booked and paid for such a flight. Compensation should come not just in form of refunding the money already paid where necessary, it should also come in form of paying back more than the passengers paid in an attempt to mitigate whatever inconveniences the delay or cancellation might cause to them.

A responsible airline management, especially in climes where there the business is quite competitive will realise that offering some sort of compensations even without the existence of a law to compel them to do so, will keep the passengers returning to their airline. Of course it cannot be in the interest of any airline to make flight delays and cancellations a habit just because it provides some sort of compensations.

The Air Passengers Bill of Rights currently in the process of being passed in Nigeria while being a step in the right direction, has, in my view not yet adequately addressed the issue of compensation of passengers in the events of delays. For instance, the Bill is said to have provisions that passengers can demand for reimbursement of money paid where flights have been delayed for up to two hours or more. And where the delay is just an hour, the airline should make provisions for two free calls, emails and snacks for affected passengers. While admitting that this is better than nothing, it is nevertheless the case that some people cannot be adequately compensated in monetary terms for even a delay of one hour. It is therefore recommended that the provisions in the Bill should be more stringent and should make it mandatory for airlines to compensate passengers in cases of flights delayed for up to one hour or more and where cancelled, compensation should not just come in form of provision of accommodation and transport to and from the airport. The compensation should be much more than that. It could come in form of perhaps, a 30% discount and refund on the ticket already bought or the passengers’ future tickets. These measures will serve to keep the airlines on their toes and will definitely go a long way to reduce the frequency of flight delays and sometimes outright cancellations in many cases, with scant or non-existent regards for the convenience or situations of the passengers.

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Diamond Bank workers protest

Diamond Bank workers protest

THREE MEN IN BLACK?

I was doing a research for a matter on-line when I stumbled on the quote of Honore de Balzac below. I have decided to share the quote with everyone not because I agree with everything in it, I most certainly do not, but because it is nothing if not interesting. Some of the things in the quote are true, even in my short years of legal practice, I have seen quite a lot which always remind of the cliché that truth is always stranger than fiction. I have seen hitherto close siblings become bitter enemies because of their parents' inheritance, I have seen marriages break which had no business coming together in the first instance, I have seen people do things which make me wonder whether their brains were on sabbatical at the time of doing the deeds...

I do not agree with the author of the quote that priests, doctors and lawyers do not think well of the world, perhaps I am only speaking for myself in this wise, but I really haven't seen too much to make me agree with this part of the quote. While I agree that most priests and lawyers in most countries wear black robes, the only kind of doctors that my research tells me wear black robes are the academic doctors and not medical doctors that I think he means in his quote. I nevertheless think the quote is interesting enough to be shared with you.






There are in modern society three men who can never think well of the world, the priest, the doctor and the man of law. And they wear black robes, perhaps because they are in mourning for every virtue and every illusion. The most hapless of these is the lawyer. He sees the same evil feelings repeated again and again. Nothing can correct them. Our offices are sewers which can never be cleansed. I have known wills burned. I have seen mothers robbing their children, wives kill their husbands. I could not tell you all I have seen for I have seen crimes against which justice is impotent. In short, all the horrors that romancers suppose they have invented are still below the truth.

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850)

RAMBLINGS OF A PERSON CONFUSED

...that which we call a Rose by any other name will smell as sweet

- Juliet in ROMEO AND JULIET, William Shakespeare




Since the Western world determines most of the things in the civilized world as we know it, allow me to lay the blame for my present confusion at their doorsteps. It started by them either being confused themselves, or deliberately trying to be mischievous by getting the rest of us confused. You probably are wondering by now what I’m going on about.

Well, it’s not just one thing, it’s a whole lot of things; from the disparity in the spellings of certain words and the way they are pronounced, to the differences in the pronunciation of certain similarly spelled words, from the way certain words appear on paper, chalk boards, computer, name it, and the way the words are rolled on the tongue, to the name given to certain animals, plants etc.

Let me start with two words that have already appeared in this piece, pronounce and pronunciation. You will think that since the word pronunciation is a derivative of the word pronounce, it will be spelled pronounciation. But oh no, the English people in their wisdom decided that the spelling must be pronunciation though every other word related to the word pronounce is similarly spelled. For instance, pronounceable, pronouncedly, pronounced, pronouncing, pronouncer, pronouncement. So, why on earth is pronunciation different from the rest? Why the sacrifice of the letter “u”?

Other sources of confusion are the words know, knowledge, psychology, pseudonym, writ, write, wrung, wry, the list goes on. And you of course guessed right! In none of these words are the first letters pronounced! So, again, I wonder, of what use are these first letters if we are supposed to ignore them in their pronunciations? Would the meaning of psychology have changed if it had been spelled as sychology from the beginning? Of course the same question applies to every other word on the list.

Still on spellings and pronunciations, you would think since the words choose, chance, choice, charade, chain, chaff, chair, chalk etc are all pronounced as if you are pronouncing words beginning with the letters sh, or ch in other words you pronounce the word chandelier as if it is spelled shandelier, charade as sharaid, you will of course naturally think words like chameleon, chamelot, chaos, character, chiropractor, all also commencing with the letters ch as the earlier-listed words will also be pronounced with ch or sh but oh no! These words are pronounced with the letter k! This is why the word character is pronounced karaktar, chamelot as kamelot, chaos as kaos and chirocpractor as kairoprakto! As a junior secondary school student 1, I made this very innocent but I dare say, understandable mistake in pronouncing chaos not with the letter k but with the letters ch! It was quite an embarrassing episode as I had made the mistake while reading a passage from one of the recommended texts out in front of the whole class! And talking of class, if it is going to be pronounced klass, why deprive K its rightful place? Why let C take the glory while K does all the work? What criteria were used in the decision of how a particular word was going to be spelled? And how many people actually know that the word choir is supposed to be pronounced with an invisible w as in kwir? Or that the word which is actually supposed to be pronounced with an invisible k commencing it? If you didn’t know, all I will say is, it serves them right that you decided to pronounce these words as spelled!

Did you know that the colour pink used to be called white? You didn’t? Well, that makes the two of us because neither did I! More to the point, I still do not know that it was ever called any other name different from Pink. But I am guessing it makes sense that it must have once upon a time been called white if the English people refer to their skin colour as white when we all can see it is actually pink. Of course, there is also confusion in the label they gave to the other different human race that populate the universe. While they refer to their own skin colour as white(?!), they call the Asians yellow and the dark-hued Africans black! Before I start on this, I have to confess that I can be quite dumb when it comes to telling colours. But even as dumb as I can be, I have managed over the years to be able to tell the most popular of the colours apart. Having been able to do this, I find it confusing, if not downright dishonest that Caucasians refer to themselves as the white race and thus the colour of their skin as white. I know the colour white, it is one of the perhaps not so many colours that I can tell in my sleep and even while unconscious. I have also seen these people and while I may not be so great with colours, I do know that the closest colour to that of the skin of the Caucasian is pink. Why then have these people chosen to call the colour of their skin white? Was pink once called white and they somehow neglected to effect the necessary correction when it was swapped with white or did they choose white because of all the positive attributes associated with that colour?
They call my skin and those of other dark-skinned Africans black. Well, I am a very dark skinned person. But as dark as I am, the most accurate colour that describes my skin is a chocolate that has a very generous portion of cocoa. And I know unless my skin is mixed with other colours, no matter how dark it gets, it will never turn black. So, if the colour of the skin of people like me is brown, why did they decide we should be called blacks? Again, could it somehow be because being dark skinned, they feel our skin (and perhaps behavior) will be closer to black and its not-so-positive attributes?

The Asians are called yellow. The only thing I’ll say is that anyone who has ever seen an Asian will know that the colour of their skin is certainly not yellow, not at least if we are going by the shade of the colour we were brought up to call yellow.

When I was in my first year at the junior Secondary School level, I read a book titled THE MADNESS OF DIDI in which the Author whose name I do not recall, argued through the novel’s protagonist that if Caucasians knowing their skin colour is pink and not white insist on calling it white, then he was also at liberty to call his own skin colour green and not the black they chose to label it. The poor man was sent to the psychiatric ward on the ground that he must be off his senses to call his skin colour green!

Again, not done with either they themselves being confused or trying to confuse the rest of us, they decided to name a species of dolphin Killer Whale! If the mammal is a dolphin, why name it Killer Whale? Talk about giving a dog a bad name in order to hang it! And, talking of which, has anybody seen a hung dog? I don’t know how that phrase came about, but I hardly think anyone who decides to kill a dog will adopt hanging as the method of choice. What happened to just shooting the dog or poisoning it?

The above by no means represent all the ways the people in the Western world have either exhibited their own confusions or deliberately attempted to confuse the rest of us. Either way, I am convinced that I am not the only one confused!

Hey, did I remember to thank you for suffering my ramblings till the very end? Thank you!

MOCALITY CLOSES SHOP!

I think I first heard about mocality.com on the radio either early in 2012 or sometime in 2011, I’m not really not sure exactly when. What I do recall is that the advert of mocality that I heard on radio then cast it as a directory of sort for local businesses in every person’s locality. For instance, if memory serves me well, the first advert I heard about Mocality.com was about a lady who needed to buy good Ofada rice for her boss and who was directed by a friend to the website for the nearest place at which she could buy the rice.

That was before they came up with mocality deals. Mocality deals aroused my interest and I signed up to receive their daily deals directly to my mail and I have as a result bought a few products and services and got to meet new people and service providers. This is how the deals (from my corner as a consumer) work, the mocality team get some product sellers and or service providers to offer their products and or services at a reduced price for a particular period of time, may be a week, and consumers like me who are interested in any of the products or services click either to buy the product/service online or go to the office of mocality in Ikeja G.R.A. to pay for it and then collect a coupon which they take to the office or shop to get the product or service already paid for.

I don’t know how profitable this venture was for the mocality crew, but I do believe very strongly that while they were still on, they provided a very valuable service mostly for the Small businesses and enterprises which ordinarily have very little or no at all budget for advertisements. For instance, a consumer who purchased a deal on mocality.com and goes to redeem the coupon at a particular business outlet can thereby establishment a relationship with that outlet that goes way beyond just merely redeeming the coupon of the product/service purchased. The consumer can see other products of interest which he/she would buy quite apart from the deal already purchased.

When I got the text and email messages which informed me of Mocality’s intention to shut down on the 28th February 2013 and which invited me to redeem the coupon of any deal I might have purchased from them on or before 25th February 2013, my first reaction was; there goes yet another casualty of Nigeria’s horrible business environment. I nevertheless put a call through to one of their staff members and asked why they were closing down. The only response she gave me though was that it was management’s decision. In search of further insight into why the company was shutting down, I went online and read their blog, therein I learnt that the company was shutting down not only their Nigeria operations, but the Kenyan as well.

Deal Dey is still in place though to continue to give small businesses the much needed exposure, but I can't help thinking what happens now to all those that earned their living at mocality.

HYPERTENSION, NOT DRUGS

The report of the autopsy done on Goldie came out yesterday and the result was that she died of hypertensive heart disease which in turn triggered intracerebellar haemorrhage. (Hypertension seems to have shifted from something associated with the old to a condition which does not discriminate based on age). This is of course contrary to the rumours being widely circulated even before Goldie’ s body got cold that she died from doping or drug use.

While the news of Goldie being married came as a huge surprise and left me wondering whether my perception of her was at all right, I am at least happy to see that my firm belief that she wasn’t the kind to be hooked on drugs is given some sort of validation. Of course this doesn’t mean that her dying of hypertension will make her death less sad, but it does mean that she died with her dignity virtually in place.

MARRIED GOLDIE!

I, and I’m sure thousands of other Nigerians who knew Goldie were sure at the revelation after her death that she was married and had been since 2005! The name Harvey, which most of us thought was her family name, it emerged, was in fact her marital name. Her husband, Andrew Harvey has since circulated pictures of their wedding probably to further convince all that there was indeed a wedding and a marriage.


The news of Goldie’s marriage was all the more surprising because of Prezzo, her former Big Brother Africa housemate’s proposal of marriage to her. These revelations, may of course have no bearing whatever on Goldie as a hardworking and homely(?) person but they do raise a lot of questions on whether anybody really knew the real Susan Oluwabimpe Harvey.
While her desire to probably keep her private life out of public scrutiny is of course, the total secrecy or at best confusion surrounding her marital status is probably the entertainment industry’s best kept secret. I had in fact earlier written that she would have, had she lived made a good wife to some lucky man, now Andrew Harvey who was she was married to for about eight years before her demise will be the best person to answer if she was.

SUSAN "GOLDIE" HARVEY: TRULY GONE TOO SOON

Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee – John Donne





There is something about the news of the death of a young person that affects me deeply. And so it was with very great shock that I heard just this morning, I slept very early last night, the news of the passing on of Susan Harvey popularly known as Goldie this morning on 98.1 Smooth FM’s ‘Freshly pressed’ program.

This is by no means a tribute, I do not lay claim to knowing her beyond what I saw of her while she was in the Big Brother House. I am not a fan of her music, I am more a fan of soulful music and oldies. This is just my perception of her person and an expression of my shock at the suddenness of her death

Perhaps, if Goldie had not participated in the Big Brother Africa Stargame edition last year, the news of her death might not have affected me for more than the few minutes that news of the death of strangers usually affect most of us before we promptly move on with our lives while chanting that life must go on.

However, much as I do not approve of the fact that the Big Brother Africa reality show does not appear aimed at promoting any particular talent in its participants but rather has the effect of promoting idleness and vices such as drinking and smoking, I must nevertheless confess to taking more than just passing interest in the reality show. And so, I was one of those who watched 2012’s edition of the Big Brother Africa dubbed Stargame in which Goldie participated. Prior to Goldie going into the house, I only knew her as a musician who dressed “funny” (for want of a better and more appropriate word) and none of whose songs I knew. But Goldie’s participation in the Big Brother Stargame showed not just me, but I believe also, a lot of Nigerians the side of her which her music never did.

In the house, we saw a Goldie that was homely, always cooking, cleaning the house, doing the laundry of both herself and Prezzo, the Kenyan housemate she fell for in the house. I saw an intelligent Goldie who won most of the tasks in the house that had to do with the intellect (just like Malvina in the previous edition which Karen Igho and that unbelievably boring Zimbabwean guy won). I saw a Goldie who was particularly emotionally vulnerable. I also saw a Goldie who in spite of her apparent deep feelings for Prezzo and the latter’s obvious desire for a physical relationship refused to allow herself to be messed up. I saw a Goldie who didn’t drink alcohol or smoke and who I very much doubt would have allowed herself to be pulled into doing drugs. I also a Goldie who was very strong in spite of her apparent emotional vulnerability. I remember my dislike of Prezzo because of the way Prezzo treated her and I felt he was very much unworthy of her and remember praying that the husband she marries be someone who will truly love her and not someone who will take advantage of her. I have no doubt she would have been a great wife to some lucky guy she will now never marry and a great mother to children she now will never bear.

The news of her sudden death after complaints of headache was all the more shocking to me because having seen her on Big Brother Africa Stargame, it was as if I had gotten to know her as a person and not just the singer with the noticeably false eyelashes and outlandish dressing. May her soul rest in peace and may God console those she left behind while forestalling this kind of death of our youths who have the capacity to contribute so much to the growth of our country.

A MAN OF YESTERDAY

I am much more comfortable writing prose than poems. However there are times when I feel a poem will do the most justice to particular subjects. I also resort to poems when I do not want to sound judgmental or when I do not want to take sides or sometimes when I want to be free to express what is in really in my mind without any let or holds.

I am not sure under which category the poem below falls I just know that I prefer to write my opinion on the matter at hand in verses rather than in the prose I'm so much more at home with.

Not being such an excellent poet, much as I tried as will be noticed after the first stanza, I surrendered and discarded any attempt at maintaining a rhyme. I opted to concentrate on the message I needed to pass which I might not be able to anytime soon if I had decided to make sure I kept the rhymes flowing. Still, I hope everyone reading will see this as a reasonably good try.

Enjoy...



A MAN OF YESTERDAY

I remember a man of yesterday
Oh no, he bears no resemblance
To the man he is today
The only thing same being a physical likeness
Yesterday, he wrote
Like a guardian of the Nation’s Estate
Respected member of the fourth estate

Oh, I remember a man of yesterday
Today, his new master guarantees his own mini State
Yesterday most mistook his writings
For a fight for their perpetually raped nation
Unawares that they were just applications
Those beautiful words no more than disguised frustrations
To be noticed and invited to partake of that famed cake
The longer his applications went unanswered
The more wisdom filled hitherto blank pages
The more truth flowed from his pen
Against the thievery & rape by those
With whom he now clinks glasses
The more the applause from the ignorant majority
Who responded by raising his pedestal

Oh yes, there is a man of yesterday
Who is now one of the men of today
With the primary responsibility of barking & growling
At the hypocritical men of yesterday
And of course those collective children of anger
Who dare get angry at the violent & merciless rape of their future
And those impressionable public
Whose brains cannot on their own interpret the rotting & rotten system
Who need twitter & facebook Lords to interpret for them

Oh no, he is a man of yesterday no more
Like the politicians he has crossed the carpet
He has transformed into a man of today
who refuses to think of tomorrow
counting on the public’s customary forgetfulness
if he can forget all those seemingly beautiful words of hungry days
how dare some people remember them today?
How dare anyone resurrect dead words to judge him today?
Surely yesterday is gone
And today demands an angry pen

Surely, he is now a man of today
Who can blame a man who changes his dance steps
To match the new beats that now fills his ears
Who dares blame a man for stockpiling today
So his children do not go hungry tomorrow?
Who dares blame a man for partaking of that irresistible cake
If the amnesiac people will forget before tomorrow?
Who dares blame a man for letting angry pettiness replace truth
If the pettiness will serve as his insurance against tomorrow’s hunger?
Who dares blame a man today,
For turning his back on a forgetful lot
Who have forgotten how they almost deified him yesterday?
Oh yes, he is now a man of today
And today is taking good care of his family’s tomorrow

©Adenike Oyalowo 040213

èèmò lukutupébè

Something happened to me recently that gave me the idea for this article. It also made me thankful to my parents for raising my brothers and I up with the Yòrùbá language. My ability to speak and write in Yòrùbá reasonably well is also because I attended a public primary school where I had a good Yòrùbá language teacher who laid a good foundation and is owed almost equally to the fact that I lived for quite a while with my paternal grandmother. I also read quite a lot of Yoruba literature in Elementary school. As anyone who was brought up with a local language will testify, there are certain expressions and situations that just cannot be adequately captured with the English language.

Now, don’t get me wrong, speaking the English language and speaking it well, is good. But I bet most of the people who actually have and speak an indigenous or local dialect will agree that however fluent you are in the English language, certain things are best said in the local language. Take the Yòrùbá language for instance, there are certain things that will happen and the first thing that pops into mind will be the following song or some other very similar song or expression:

Mo r í èèmò ni Agége
Ajá wọ èwù, ó ró şo
Ộbọ ń gun kèké…

The song goes on but I can’t swear to the exact lyrics of the remaining lines. The three lines above when translated into English go roughly go as follows:

I saw wonders in Agege
A dog dressed up and tied wrapper
A monkey is riding a bicycle…

The remaining lines go on to describe the surprising mannerisms of a house rat, an animal smoking a cigarette and a cow drinking alcohol. Of course by now, if you did not know, you would have guessed that this song can only come to mind when a person has witnessed or experienced something very surprising or very much unexpected.

In the midst of my ruminations about the richness of our local languages and their adequacies in describing certain situations, I wondered idly about how the song above and indeed most of our local proverbs came about. I remember having a book of Yòrùbá proverbs and the story behind most of the proverbs when I was in Elementary school. I remember the book made some very interesting reading even if I can no longer lay claim to remembering most of the stories I read.

The richness of our local languages makes me sympathise with today’s children who are mostly raised with the English language. What I find most ironic and amusing about today’s children being raised with the English language is those whose parents can barely string two correct sentences together forcibly speaking bad English to their children and thus possibly corrupting these children’s spoken English. In my opinion, these children suffer from double jeopardy; they do not speak their local languages well if at all, and they speak bad English and are probably worse at writing the English language. I once heard a story about a mother threatening to beat her child for some wrong done who said: You will eat cane o. If you think that is funny, wait for this; one of my brothers once told me about overhearing a girl pointing her father who was smoking a cigarette to a friend thus: “look at my father, he is drinking cigar”. Haba!

I know we Yòrùbás are probably the most guilty of speaking what is called “Yòrùbá English” a sort of literal translation of Yòrùbá words into the English language, but I think saying someone is “drinking cigar” rather than smoking a cigarette is carrying literal translation too far.

I am not a big fan of Nollywood movies especially those not produced by Tunde Kelani, Kunle Afolayan and very few other really great producers. In spite of this fact however, and also in spite of the fact that I hate how Yòrùbá script writers muddle up their stories towards the end and all the flashbacks they never seem to be able to do without, yet, I am greatly tolerant of, and even sometimes enjoy watching Yòrùbá films because of the richness of the language and the way the words are used.

I believe children will be better raised with both the local languages and the English language being spoken in the homes. Just imagine trying to say èèmò lukutupébè in the English language! Anyone willing to try?