…He hidn’t clean the garment he tore
The Atiku Media Office has issued a scathing response to Daniel Bwala, the spokesman for President Bola Tinubu, following what it described as Bwala’s “rather embarrassing” interview on an international platform and his subsequent attempts to rewrite history.
In a statement signed by Phrank Shaibu, Senior Special Assistant to Atiku Abubakar on Public Communication, the media office tore into Bwala’s performance during his recent appearance with journalist Mehdi Hassan, as well as his post-interview press release defending his conduct.
The statement was triggered by Bwala’s attempt to frame the interview as a moment of personal courage and intellectual bravery.
The Atiku Media Office, however, offered a starkly different assessment, accusing Bwala of parading falsehoods and engaging in opportunistic political theatre.
“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,” the statement read.
The media office went further, revealing that it possesses evidence of Bwala’s past attempts to manipulate the media for political gain. According to the statement, Bwala had previously reached out to the Atiku Media Office, requesting that they issue a press release claiming that President Tinubu and his associates were threatening his life.
“He was quite insistent that we amplify that narrative at the time. We declined deliberately 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,” Shaibu revealed.
The statement also addressed Bwala’s defense of the current administration’s record, which the Atiku Media Office argued collapsed under scrutiny during the Mehdi Hassan interview. It noted that when confronted with documented criticisms from credible organisations regarding governance failures, Bwala resorted to dismissing them as “fake news” rather than engaging with the evidence.
“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 statement added.
In a particularly sharp metaphor, the Atiku Media Office dismissed Bwala’s role as a presidential spokesman, suggesting he was hired as a “media dry cleaner” but failed at the task.
“And what kind of government hires its former fiercest critic as its media dry cleaner? Predictably, Mr. Bwala did yesterday what he has always done — he did not clean the garment; he tore it.”
The statement also took an unusual detour into grammar, mocking Bwala for his use of the phrase “a water” during the interview, which the media office cited as evidence of basic illiteracy.
“How does a ‘lawyer,’ one so eager to sermonise about competence, manage to betray such basic illiteracy in the English language? Water, for his information, is an uncountable noun. One does not say ‘this is a water.’ One says ‘this is water’ or ‘a glass of water,’” the statement read.
Concluding on a ominous note, the Atiku Media Office warned Bwala that his attempts to rewrite his political past would fail.
“History, unfortunately for him, keeps receipts. And so do we.”
Discussion about this post