Bwala Signposts Outdated Version of Political Engagement
By Elempe Dele
After Mehdi Hassan, British-American broadcaster and journalist, interviewed Daniel Bwala, the Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Media and Policy Communications, recently, of the several versions of headlines that blazened and blackened newspaper headlines was ‘See How Tinubu’s Spokesman, Daniel Bwala was Disgraced by International Journalists.” It was a tough week for Bwala, all effort to do damage control dug him deeper into his misadventure. On Market Place of Idea, MPOI, we would say, “don’t dig when you are in a whole.”
During the 2023 presidential election, Bwala was a spokesperson for the Atiku Abubakar’s campaign. He said so many things against his current employer, President Tinubu. However during an interview by Mehdi Hassan on Al Jazeera’s “Head to Head,” he was confronted with several of his past allegations, and he denied saying many of them. Nigerians were not altogether shocked.
During the period that built up to the 2023 presidential election, he accused Senator Tinubu of creating a militia to target the opposition politicians and to influence the elections. Although he denied ever making such claims, Hassan played a video where he said them.
He was shell-shocked. He also claimed Tinubu was involved in moving suspicious “bullion van” cash, he labeled Tinubu a “known drug lord” involved in a heroin cartel and challenged Tinubu to sue him if he was not factual.
He also alleged Tinubu threatened his life, an accusation he denied when Hassan asked him if he ever said so. In addition to these, he accused Tinubu of forgery and rigging during the 2023 election.
He claimed Tinubu, he now serve under, knew nothing about “government and national security” and was not fit to lead Nigeria. While Hassan reeled all these missives, his defense was that the statements were mere “politics” and “demarketing competitors.”
My point of divergence is that politics should not be about lies, defamation, character assassination, false statements, untruth, deliberate deception, mendacity, distortion, prevarications, fabrications, dishonesty…Today, Bwala has earned, deservingly, the nicknames, “I never said that” and “context matters.” I am sure these names will stick to him for the rest of his political life.
I am of the opinion that political campaigns must be modernized deliberately, away from the mundane, parochial, trivial and provincial outlook which were the hallmark of the likes of Bwala in 2023 and beyond. Politics of peddling falsehood and propaganda that cannot be substantiated should be seen to be outdated and discouraged. I disagree that the post-truth era should be retained. I am aware that technological advances have created fertile grounds where misinformation and fake news are distributed to social media users faster than verified facts. And some of the receptors, the Social Media Illiterates( as Wole Soyinka would call them) easily believe, share and forward such contents with the arrogance of truth.
Yes, I agree that these individuals like Bwala persist within our body of politics because they cater to the needs of voters that need emotional comfort. No doubt, they know fear and anger are very effective at shaping public opinion where objective facts should. Party members also put themselves in groups where their biases exist. This confirmation makes it easy for them to be misinformed. Most importantly, the electorates have little or no trust in government, its institutions and even credible sources of information, so they easily rely gravely on alternatives. “Na lie them talk, dem done by Vanguard, who trust EFCC, na witch-hunting, Kanu no do anything, dem done chop our money, Dangote na monopoly hin dey do…”
In spite of all these, the type of politics by the Dwalas of this country must be discarded for modernized politics to blossom. We must deliberately move beyond the ‘lying political strategy’ and move towards transparent narratives as we approach the 2027 election. We must be advocates of stronger protection against fake news and make it as criminal as possible. People should not be allowed to libelous and slanderous thinking afterall, they are civil matters.
I do concede that the digital-era manifestation remains a noteworthy difficulty to contemporary democracy and its stability, efforts must be made to shift from the era of weaponizing lies and falsehood as political ideology. Until this is done, the likes of Bwala will continue to decompose our political lives.
Elempe Dele is a journalist, he wrote from Warri, Delta State.
