By Tunde Olusunle.
Mehdi Hasan, the tough-grilling Al Jazeera inquisitor, did more than marinate and barbecue Daniel Bwala on global television, Friday March 6, 2026. You had to sympathise with Bwala the kind of hiding he received on global television that day, even while being concurrently embarrassed by his crass incompetence. Hasan by the way, is the Al Jazeera reincarnate of Stephen Sackur, the erstwhile host of BBC Hardtalk between 2004 and 2025. Sackur, like Tim Sebastian before him, was famous for his prosecutorial, hard-punching approach to engagements, which compelled his guests to confront discomforting truths. It didn’t matter to Mehdi Hasan that Bwala’s middle name is indeed Hassan with one consonant more than his variant of the same name.
For those who may not know, Bwala loves the limelight, he covets grandstanding and exhibitionism, a fact confirmed by Mehdi Hasan at that wholesale deconstruction. Such predilection is called sè ka rimi in Yoruba. It would translate as “make I do make dem see me” in Nigerian pidgin. Bwala shared a video clip of his “research and rehearsal” for his ill-fated Al Jazeera appearance before the programme. He needed Nigerians to know that beyond the commonplace “WASCE,” “NECO” and similar local examinations he had faced on our home-based television stations, he was poised to write the very tough “Cambridge” higher school certificate examination, in London.
Despite my four decades in media practice and scholarship, I couldn’t recognise any face in the motley crowd Bwala assembled in the conference room in the widely publicised video of his fervid preparation for Mehdi Hasan. Some of us are “old school” these days, you never know. While working for President Olusegun Obasanjo between 1999 and 2007, I was interviewed on quite a number of foreign stations including the BBC and VOA on a number of occasions. I never needed a rehearsal. Indeed, the impromptu-ness of some invitations barely gave you time to catch your breath before being hoisted on global networks. We survived the furnaces of such conscriptions just by being comported, perspicacious and professional.
Mehdi Hasan denied Bwala the opportunity to revel in his pastime as he left the London studios of Al Jazeera, for his return flight to Abuja. Poor boy, he was bruised, bludgeoned, bloodied. Typical Bwala would have taken selfies in the luxurious comfort of the “first class” sitting area on the flight that was bringing him home and plastered the internet with his images. Ever showy, he always wants the rest of us to appreciate how hard he’s working for us and how he’s enjoying on our behalf. Obasanjo by the way, officially consigned us to the “economy class” on commercial flights in our time. We were, however, at liberty to upgrade to business class at our own cost. That’s how austere Baba was.
Bwala has a proclivity for making a show of his privileged circumstances at every given opportunity. One wonders in which media reference book he gleaned that promotion of self, for the image maker, must proceed apace with the projection of one’s principal. While serving as Special Adviser to the President of the Senate in the Ninth Assembly, Senator Ahmed Lawan, Bwala always wanted the world to see him nestling in the immediate space of the nation’s Numero Trois. Back in 2022 after ditching Lawan for former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the flagbearer of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, (PDP) at the 2023 elections, Bwala suffused the social media with photographs of his holiday in France and Dubai with Atiku. Mehdi Hasan allowed him return like a rain-ruffled chick.
Bwala is everything a spokesman should not be. He is presumptuous, self-opinionated and deluded. He celebrates and serenades himself at every given opportunity, rather than speak for his employer. I stumbled on an interview he had with Vanessa Obioha of Thisday in May last year and this is how he described himself: “I have two decades of unmatched public communication skills anchored on sound knowledge of governance, law and diplomacy. The knowledge of law and advocacy is the icing on the cake because it helps me to know the legal implications of all issues I communicate on behalf of my principal.” Without interrogating the grammaticality of Bwala’s ijala here, I find this boastfully preposterous, utterly vainglorious and needlessly self-serving.
Bwala seems to think he’s the first person who was ever spokesperson to a President. He thinks he’s the best thing that ever happened to public communication. While I do not intend to rival him in vacuous self-promotion, I probably need to drop it here that exactly 34 years ago this month when I was just 27, I was already Director of Information and Public Affairs to the Governor of my state. Beyond me, my very good friend, Reuben Abati, who was spokesman to President Goodluck Jonathan between 2011 and 2015, earned his doctorate from the University of Ibadan at the record age of 25 in 1990, in that generation. I never read anywhere that Abati made such outlandish, all-knowing, sweeping submissions about himself, despite actually graduating with a first class degree honours from the University of Calabar, months before his 20th. Bwala is 51.
Mehdi Hasan made Daniel Bwala pay for his propensity for what we call atenuje in Yoruba. The expression translates variously as “extreme greed,” “insatiable gluttony,” “a desperate urge to consume at the first opportunity.” His curriculum vitae reads more like an opportunistic social climber, whose job transmutations have always been informed by the prospects of greener pastures elsewhere, and not overarching principles. So he has gravitated from a former Nigerian Number Three public officer, to a former Vice President and prospective President, and then to the incumbent President. And he’s all too eager to discountenance everything he ever said about anyone, contextualising such immutable records as “political talk.” And what was that his nonsensical postscript to his better forgotten Al Jazeera misadventure making puerile excuses for his show of shame? Demonstrated how desperate he is to retain his job and the perks thereof.
President Tinubu may just spare Bwala’s blushes and allow him stay on the job, despite loud clamour for him to be sacked, or for him to quit the job voluntarily. Nigerians are not famous for leaving their comfort zones voluntarily. Former Finance Minister under President Muhammadu Buhari, Kemi Adeosun, was the last person I remember who resigned from the padded comfort of her coveted office. Tinubu may keep Bwala for no other reason than trying to ensure some balancing in the organogram of government spokespersons. After that wholesale deflation of his hubris before millions of viewers across the world, Bwala must henceforth intentionally humble himself. He should know by now as we say in pidgin English, that “shoe get size.” Al Jazeera is not Hawul Television.
Bwala needs to learn from his immediate colleagues who are individually and collectively more knowledgeable and more experienced than he is. Between Bayo Onanuga, Sunday Dare and Tunde Rahman, there is at least one full century of experience in journalism and communications, straddling the print and broadcast media. Ajuri Ngelale retains profound affection for President Tinubu and the government and would have stood in very ably even as an external explainer for the administration. He is a very grounded broadcast journalist. Does Bwala know for instance, that Dare was for many years the Head of the Hausa Service of the VOA? I met Peter Clottey of the English Service through him several years ago. I believe Dare would have done better than Bwala if he was Mehdi Hasan’s guest last Friday. It’s not every invite to the ring that a professional fighter honours, though. The Nigerian exhortation, “shine your eyes” cannot be more apposite.
– Tunde Olusunle, PhD, Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA), teaches Creative Writing at the University of Abuja.
