The camp of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has criticised the Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Media and Policy Communication, Daniel Bwala, over his attempt to defend his recent appearance on Al Jazeera’s Head to Head programme.
In a statement issued in Abuja on Saturday, Atiku’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, described Bwala’s outing on the programme hosted by Mehdi Hasan as embarrassing and accused him of parading falsehoods.
He said, “We have read the latest statement issued by Daniel Bwala in the aftermath of his rather embarrassing interview with a mixture of suppressed disgust and embarrassment — not for ourselves, but for the sheer enthusiasm with which he parades falsehoods as though repetition could somehow elevate them into truth.
“Bwala’s sudden discovery of courage and rhetorical flourish is rather amusing, especially from someone whose political trajectory has been defined less by conviction and more by opportunistic merchandising of allegiance.
“Since he now appears eager to rewrite history, it is necessary to refresh his memory.”
Shaibu further claimed that Bwala had previously asked the Atiku media team to issue a statement alleging threats to his life from Tinubu and his associates.
“We remain in possession of his message requesting that the Atiku Media Team issue a press statement claiming that President Tinubu and his associates were threatening his life. He was quite insistent that we amplify that narrative at the time.
“We deliberately declined because we recognised it for what it was: a frivolous and opportunistic attempt at political theatre, consistent with his long-established penchant for turning politics into a marketplace where loyalty is traded like a commodity.”
The Atiku aide also dismissed Bwala’s defence of his performance during the interview.
“His attempt to recast the Mehdi Hasan interview as some heroic act of intellectual bravery is equally amusing. Anyone who watched that exchange objectively saw something quite different.
“The interviewer methodically dismantled the talking points he came armed with and exposed, one after the other, the contradictions between his past statements and his present posture,” he said.
According to him, Bwala struggled to reconcile his previous criticisms of Tinubu with his current role as a presidential spokesman.
Shaibu added that when confronted with reports by international organisations on governance and security challenges, Bwala allegedly dismissed them as “fake news.”
He said, “Bwala was confronted with his own words about President Tinubu — statements he once made with remarkable certainty — only to retreat into the tired refuge that ‘it was politics.’ But it is both wicked and morally bankrupt to dismiss matters of grave national consequence as mere politics.
“At several points, the interviewer’s persistence reduced his defence of both his principal and the government’s record to a series of evasions and rhetorical detours. What Nigerians witnessed was not the fearless demolition of hostile journalism he now imagines, but the uncomfortable spectacle of a spokesperson struggling to reconcile shifting loyalties with inconvenient facts.”
The criticism followed Bwala’s defence of his appearance on Al Jazeera’s Head to Head programme, where he faced questions from Hasan over Nigeria’s security situation and his past comments about Tinubu.
The interview, which aired on Thursday, sparked backlash on social media, particularly on X, where clips of the exchange went viral, and critics described Bwala’s outing as embarrassing.
During the programme, Hasan repeatedly confronted Bwala with his past statements in which he had described Tinubu as corrupt, a drug baron and unfit to lead — remarks he made before defecting from the Peoples Democratic Party to the All Progressives Congress ahead of the 2023 Nigerian general election.
When Bwala denied making some of the remarks, the host produced video clips of his earlier statements.
Hassan also pressed the presidential aide on Nigeria’s worsening security situation, citing reports from organisations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, while critics said Bwala appeared unable to counter the claims with data of his own.
Despite the backlash, Bwala maintained that he had no regrets defending the Tinubu administration and said he would do so again on any global platform.
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