By Felix Durumbah
“The opposition’s work is to criticise the sitting government and hold them accountable. My views changed after I met the President, and he saw a need to appoint me.”
With these words, former spokesman of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) for the 2023 election, Daniel Bwala, sought to justify his ‘cross over’ to becoming a spokesman of President Bola Tinubu.
Tinubu, elected on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2023 and inaugurated on May 29,2023,suffered some of the most virulent attacks on him ahead and immediately after the presidential election at the hands of Bwala, a known close ally of PDP’s Atiku Abubakar,who was declared second in the election. Abubakar is more fondly called Atiku by his supporters.
Many Nigerians were rocked to see Bwala later accept an appointment from President Tinubu on November 14, 2024 –as Presidential Special Adviser on Media and Policy.
Speaking on Arise TV programme, Morning Show, on Tuesday, February 11, Bwala dismissed all his past strident criticisms of Tinubu as “irrelevant” now.
According to him, he took the stance at the time because he was in the opposition.
Apparently seeing perspectives better now, Bwala stressed that his views took a tumble after he became part of the Tinubu government.
In 2022, Bwala, a Christian, quit the APC when the party opted for a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket which saw Tinubu pair with former governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, for the 2023 poll. Bwala hails from Borno.
Disappointed, he joined the PDP and due to his excellent communication competencies, became the spokesman of the party’s PCC from where he did a yeoman’s job of unleashing expose after expose of many of the assumed deficiencies of the holders of the APC ticket as well as the party’s plans.
It was Bwala who in May 2023, in an Arise TV interview, challenged the legitimacy of Tinubu’s victory, labelling him as as “president-select” and not “president-elect”.
The word “President-select” quickly gained traction and entered Nigeria’s political lexicon eliciting widespread usage.
Bwala fingered electoral umpire, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), for manipulating the presidential election results.
When Atiku and PDP headed for the courts, Bwala came out strongly, saying: “We are in court to say it was a rigged process. As long as there is no final determination of the matter, we have every right under law, equity, and justice to express our opinion that he is a president-select and not a president-elect.”
In another interview in March, 2023, Bwala insisted that Atiku and PDP won the election.
His words: “We won. If these results were allowed to be read from the result sheet, we won with over one million votes. Nigerian people voted PDP as the winner of this election, but history and posterity will judge.”
Even in December 2023, apparently after taking a hard look at Tinubu’s first six months in office, he carpeted the administration, saying even if handed decades, Tinubu would come short of effective performance.
He said: “When people talk about being patient, you have to consider the time frame the public officer has to execute their mandate. The President has just been voted into a term of four years. He’s eight months in, which is 31.8% of his total time.
“He has less than 70% left; when is that change supposed to happen? When Buhari took over in 2015, we were told the same thing. He finished his term, but the fundamental problems remained. If the policies are flawed, even 30 years won’t fix it.”
Bwala had also questioned Tinubu’s university degree certificate at the time, claiming that it was forged –a matter that was later settled by the judiciary.
Presently, in his new role, Bwala defends Tinubu’s policies with his usual competence.
