Citizen Witnessing in the Dock: Lessons on Power and Privacy from the Ibom Air Incident
Watching the moments when two hitherto unknown, young Nigerian women were forced into our collective consciousness reminded me of what media scholars have been saying for a while: we are all accidental journalists now. The worrying thing for those who care about these issues is that the stories of Comfort Emmanson and Jennifer Edema Elohor show us that while citizen witnessing puts ordinary people ‘in charge,’ it is dangerous power.
It is difficult to miss the two starkly different viral videos. The first one, involving Comfort Emmanson in that infamous altercation with crew and what looked like ground staff of an Ibom Air flight exploded not just because of the young woman’s shockingly embarrassing behaviour but also because of the risqué video content that showed her naked bust. The second one, involving a member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is far more sobering, grim even, for the brutal assault masterminded by members of a certain vigilante in Anambra. Understandably, both videos went viral, shared multiple times by social media users at breathtaking speed.
The two incidents took place in contrasting situations but they are connected by the same principle, the crystallisation of a revolution that started when ordinary people with no journalism training became powerful, sometimes reckless storytellers, editors and publishers – armed with just their smartphones. This revolution should jolt us into taking note of our new reality, demanding that we go beyond the emotions associated with those events to interrogate whether in our quest to be citizen witnesses, we are creating a more just society or simply a more vicious one?
Those videos go beyond just sharing gossip; they represent a significant shift in the power dynamics that mirrors a global transformation. The people who filmed Comfort Emmanson and Jennifer Edema Elohor joined a growing practice of citizen witnessing or what media scholars like to call ‘accidental journalism,’ which in essence refers to how ordinary people, without any formal training or editorial oversight, create the news simply by being present with a recording device. They are following a tradition established by the likes of George Holliday, the plumber who filmed Rodney King’s brutal beating in Los Angeles in 1991, to Sohaib Athar, the IT consultant in Pakistan who live-tweeted the raid on Osama bin Laden without knowing it. They are examples of citizen witnessing, a simple but powerful act, now enhanced, thanks to social media, and which allows ordinary people to bypass the gatekeepers and produce raw, unfiltered testimony directly onto our screens.
Here is the issue: this newfound power is instantly complicated and ethically fraught. Think about this for a moment, you happen on an event; you bring out your smartphone to record and without thinking, go ahead to share in your ‘small network.’ Innocuous, you might be tempted to think but not so from what we know. The moment you decide to lift your phone and hit ‘record;’ you stop being the passive bystander and media consumer that legacy media organisations had dealt with for long. For in that moment, you make the decision to ‘be involved.’ It’s exciting to be involved but this is not just a cultural choice; once you enter this terrain, you are stepping into a legal and constitutional grey area. Just so we know, Section 37 of the Nigerian Constitution guarantees the right to privacy of citizens, their homes, correspondence, and communications.
I know for historical factors, this is something probably low down on the list of national issues but the culture of non-consensual recording and sharing has the potential to directly challenge the fundamental right to privacy, a pillar of our democracy. Here is something to consider the next time you are tempted to become involved: Are you just a neutral observer documenting an event of public interest or an active participant in a potential breach of privacy and dignity? Would that piece of content qualify for evidence of a crime or amount to a modern-day public shaming? This really is the dilemma I see in those two events; which makes them perfect case studies for us to critically interrogate citizen witnessing’s dual nature.
Take the Youth Corper’s video as an example; on its own, that can be used to make a compelling case in support of this phenomenon. That video is an excellent piece of evidence of a horrific crime, the creation of which we can all agree is ‘clearly in the public interest,’ thereby potentially justifying the intrusion. As with similar pieces of content, the video gave voice to a victim when traditional systems might have failed or been slow to react, leading to concrete action against the offenders. The arrests and official condemnation of the people responsible for that attack are a compelling arguments for citizen witnessing operating at its ideal best. A digital check on power, something that strengthens accountability, empowering the vulnerable.
In contrast, the Comfort Emmanson video, shows us something different. This is one in which citizen witnessing looks less like a pursuit of justice and more like the activation of a digital mob, eager to try, convict, and punish an individual for a personal dispute. This is where digital culture directly collides with constitutional law. The recording and distribution of her, topless and without consent for the purpose of ridicule and public scorn, can be seen as a violation of her constitutional right to privacy under Section 37. This changes our understanding of the incident, from a mere viral moment into a case study of how our online behaviours can erode the very rights that underpin our society. And it is where a nearly 100-year-old argument between two American thinkers becomes relevant for our understanding of the moment. The journalist and political commentator Walter Lippmann did not trust the public’s ability to rationally understand complex events. He saw the ‘untrained accidental witness’ as an active threat to a coherent truth, principally because they are inherently prone to emotion, bias, and a lack of context. Watching from his grave, Lippmann would have viewed the online frenzy and vitriolic commentary about Emmanson and feared that his worst fears have been confirmed. That is because a decontextualised clip was enough to fuel a rash, emotional rush to judgement, with scant regard for the full story, the underlying causes of the conflict, or her fundamental right to simply have a bad day without it defining her life.
Lipmann’s intellectual rival, the philosopher John Dewey, would most likely have had more faith in the collective public. Dewey believed in the ‘embodied knowledge’ of ordinary people and valued participatory democracy. I imagine he would have argued that even the messy, often flawed act of recording and sharing is the public’s way of seizing the narrative from powerful, opaque institutions – be it a major airline, a government agency, or the police – that have historically ignored or mistreated them. In this more optimistic view, the very act of pressing ‘record’ is a democratic one, a way for the ruled to observe and challenge the rulers. However, even Dewey might be alarmed by the lack of deliberation and the mob-like mentality that can so easily emerge from these digital gatherings, a mentality that casually disregards entrenched legal protections.
The flip side of all these is that as powerful as this seems to be for enhancing participatory media in a democratic setting, this tool has a razor-sharp edge with real-world legal implications. Aside the court of public opinion, there is the real court of law in Nigeria, where the largely ignored Cybercrimes Act of 2015 provides a crucial legal framework for those who like to record and share. Section 24 of the Act makes it a crime to send messages that are “grossly offensive, pornographic or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character” through a computer system. This is the critical legal pivot, which could be interesting. Could a video of a public argument, shared with the deliberate intent to shame, harass, incite hatred, or bully an individual – turning them into an object of ridicule like Comfort Emmanson – be easily interpreted by a court as crossing that legal line from mere documentation into the realm of cyberstalking. The intention for sharing is as crucial as the content itself; a point often missed in the whole dramatic rush to publish and share. The understanding of the act of sharing is, therefore, significantly altered – from a mere cultural behaviour into a potentially criminal one – punishable by a fine of up to ₦7 million- or three-years imprisonment. Suddenly, participants in a digital shaming campaign aren’t just followers of a toxic cultural norm; they could be potential defendants, their online actions carrying the same weight as offline ones.
This is interesting because it suddenly looks like both a legal and ethical tightrope, which leave all of us who create and share contents of this nature in a precarious position. Yes, social media has democratised communication and handed us power but withholding the manual. The same tool that humbles a violent monarch can just as easily destroy a young woman for having an argument.
The tendency would be for the one who witnesses and records a crime scene to be hailed a hero while the one who films a personal meltdown for clout effectively becomes a bully. The culture that encourages people to share before verification, promoted by the algorithms of outrage, is at odds the sober principles of justice, privacy, and dignity enshrined in our laws. Riding on the fleeting mood of the online crowd, there is only a thin separating both. The result? A society where everyone is both a potential watchdog and a potential victim, where a single mistake can be amplified into a life-altering event.
So, do we lock up our phones to prevent us from committing infractions? In a nation like Nigeria, where official routes to justice can be slow or corrupt, citizen footage are helping to impose some level of forced transparency and accountability. The real lesson is to recognise the profound weight of the power in the smartphone and to use it with a new sense of responsibility. Before we record, we must pause and interrogate our own motivation: what is my true role in this situation?
