The terms “fact” and “truth” are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct meanings. A “fact” is a statement that can be verified or proven to be true through evidence or demonstration. It is objective and verifiable. Saying “the Earth is round” is a fact that can be scientifically proven.
“Truth,” on the other hand, is a concept that is more subjective and philosophical. It refers to the state or quality of being by reality or fact. Truth can also encompass a wide range of beliefs, values, and experiences. Like the statement “honesty is the best policy”, it is a truth that is accepted by many people, but it may not be universally true for everyone. A fact is a statement that can be verified, while truth is a concept that is subjective and refers to the state or quality of being by reality or fact.
We live in what some are calling a post-truth world. We hear a lot about fake news, about “truthiness”, about the facts and the perception of those facts and the reportage of the perception of those facts and the tweeting of the reportage of the perception of those facts. At the top of the political food chain, this fracturing of narrative is most obvious, but it is merely symptomatic of what is going on below.
Comfort Emmanson was involved in an altercation with an air hostess during a flight from Uyo to Lagos last Sunday. Several pieces of footage on various social media platforms showed the passenger assaulting the crew member while bundling her out of the plane, and sensitive parts of her body were exposed. She was later arraigned and remanded in Kirikiri Maximum Prison, as the Airlines Operators of Nigeria (AON) slammed a life ban on her.
However, the Minister of Aviation, Festus Keyamo, intervened and directed Ibom Airline to withdraw criminal charges against Comfort Emmanson, and the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) also lifted the lifetime flying ban imposed on Comfort after the minister’s appeal.
Though regrettable how she was treated, Bonano will contend here that valuable lessons were learnt from the incident. Yes! Bonano will posit here that the Ibom Air hostess knew what she was doing, and the girl, Comfort, fell for it. Where was the wisdom in Comfort?
Do not allow people to manipulate you into doing something wrong or initiating the wrong approach, because the world will never see what they did to you, but will only see what you do to them. This, Bonano will contend, was what played out during the Ibom Air saga. The evidence the world saw was the girl assaulting the air hostess, and that was the fact. But what was the truth?
When you want to fight, agitate or engage in any action, it is always best and advisable to have reason and supporting evidence. Comfort, out of impulse, may or might have a good reason to react the way she did, but where was the evidence to show her reasons?
If you have watched the movie Odyssey, you will be able to conceive what Bonano is trying to structure here. In the movie Odyssey, the king went to war and did not return as expected. Everyone thought he was dead, but some men came to marry the wife who had a son. The king, who was disguised as an old man, returned on the same day fixed for the wife to pick a man to marry. The son was very angry because it was an insult to his father, the king.
But the king told his son to wait until there was evidence to support the reason for his anger, and when the time came, all the men were killed. One of the men asked what their offence was because they did nothing wrong for coming to marry a woman whom they thought her husband was dead.
The king gave him an answer by telling the man the offence committed, backed with evidence. That is the way the law works, and that is what the world would see. The law does not deal with the truth sometimes, but with the facts that one can show before the court, but it should be noted that not every fact is the truth.
Bonano now asks, What are the facts in the Ibom Air case? The video showing the girl slapping (assaulting) the air hostess is a fact, but the truth is, something led to that slap from the girl. Was that truth evident before the world? No! Was the fact before the world? Yes!
The facts are such that a reasonable human could concoct a narrative that puts her in the wrong, but there was no truth to show why she reacted. The facts did not show what happened earlier, but what difference does that make? Negative story is the most compelling kind; if it bleeds, it leads, and humans gravitate toward things dark and sinister.
As a society, Bonano believes it is good for us to be hearing the stories of those who have for so long been unrepresented in our narrative. Considering other perspectives deepens our understanding and can allow us to be more empathetic, kinder to one another, and hear those whose voices were long silenced.
But because humans make negatives out of neutrals, absenting other forces, the risk is that we will take a bald fact, so-and-so met with so-and-so, and assign it nefarious meaning, so-and-so is treasonously colluding with so-and-so. Thus, it becomes almost impossible for anyone to do anything that will not be immediately (mis)interpreted as evil. The facts are relevant, but the truth is important, because the facts and the truth are not the same.
Thus, simultaneously, humans are such fascinating creatures; we have a long-overdue development of new historical narratives giving us a perspective we never had before, and a calcifying of those narratives in a way that excludes the possibility of truth from any other source. In Comfort’s ordeal, nobody cares to know the truth; they only saw the fact!
