In just two years, Daniel Bwala, the newly appointed Special Adviser to the President on Media and Communications, went from accusing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of electoral fraud and certificates forgery to becoming his spokesperson.
Bwala’s appointment on November 14 came after a noticeable shift in his political allegiance. In January, he noted his potential defection from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) after Atiku Abubakar, whom he served as spokesperson, lost the presidential election.
His posts on X from late December to early January indicated a gradual softening of his stance on Tinubu’s government.
In January, Bwala paid a visit to the State House in Abuja. He also met with Tinubu in Paris in the same month, where he praised the President’s “passion to lead Nigeria out of the woods”.
This launched Bwala’s pro-Tinubu rally on social media, as against his earlier criticisms during the 2023 election cycle, where he was vocal against Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC).
In April 2023, Bwala accused Tinubu of rigging the election. He said that the President would face challenges with moral legitimacy upon assuming office.
“Right now, although the presumption of law is in favour of Tinubu until the final determination of the election tribunal and appeals, he will struggle with moral legitimacy (because he rigged the election) for 240 days of his presidency,” Bwala posted on X.
“Eminent scholars, human rights activists, and strong opinion molders who have traditionally been critical are suddenly, for cultural and tribal reasons, throwing their weight behind him in a clandestine way.”
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This was not a one-off statement. In May 2023, during an interview with Arise Television, Bwala doubled down on his claims, challenging the legitimacy of Tinubu’s victory. He described Tinubu as a “president-select” rather than a “president-elect”, accusing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of manipulating the presidential election results.
“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,” Bwala declared.
Bwala’s scepticism extended back to March 2023, when he insisted in another interview that the PDP had won the election.
“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,” he asserted.
As recently as December 2023, Bwala cast doubt on Tinubu’s ability to govern effectively, even if given decades.
“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,” Bwala remarked.
“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’s criticisms were not limited to the election results. In 2022, he took a firm stance against Tinubu’s candidacy, insisting that Tinubu had forged his university degree certificate.
In an interview with Channels Television, Bwala cited a legal case from 2002 in which Festus Keyamo, Nigeria’s current aviation minister under Tinubu, had challenged Tinubu’s certificates in court.
“Festus Keyamo, now the presidential spokesman, was the appellant in a case against Bola Ahmed Tinubu, accusing him of certificate forgery. This isn’t a slip of the tongue; he went to court not on behalf of a client but as the appellant,” Bwala claimed.
Meanwhile, Bwala was a staunch member of the APC before defecting to the PDP in July 2022.
At the time, he said he defected for his principles and because the APC decided to field a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
—[FIJ]
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