The Return of Bwala

Tijjani Kumalia writes about the recent move by former spokesman of Atiku Abubakar 2023 presidential campaign organisation, Daniel Bwala, to fault ranking Senator Ali Ndume for openly criticising the administration of President Bola Tinubu.

Some few days back, Daniel Bwala, who appears to have been carried away by his scramble for relevance and later found a launchpad in Senator Ali Ndume’s harmless reminder to President Bola Tinubu to make more advances. Obviously hoodwinked by modern-day marketing stunts ravaging the literary world, Bwala, is excited by some averagely written motivational books hidden behind bestseller tags to play it up. After throwing up his usual tantrums, he ended up justifying Senator Ndume’s position.

The senator, who comes from the same senatorial constituency as Bwala drew the attention of Nigerians, as well as the president himself, to the fact that he is being shielded from the real state of affairs in the country. Both Bwala and Felix Morka, APC’s publicity secretary—and now APC as a party—unfortunately went on  to visit more harm on the president than they set out to defend him for. They went beyond what the senator is alluding to, and implied that it was in fact the president who is both intolerant of, and does not entertain, alternative views. If the president is not shielded by his handlers, it then must be a case of him building a Gilded Cage around himself.

For Morka, he has a job to defend his party and the president, even though not from friendly fires; but for Bwala, the motive is apparent, to even scarcely need re-stating. Morka may have felt the senator is stirring up the polity, a polity though already agitated, but Bwala sees a game for his hunt.

First of all, with Ndume or not, Nigerians already feel that, given the hardship they have been plunged into since May 2023, the president is not adequately aware of how difficult life has become for them. And if he is aware, whatever energy he may be putting into alleviating, it is not visible to Nigerians and at the same time not felt by the most affected groups.

That he emphatically admits them in his addresses to the nation means little to them since the policies put out by his government make no impact on their lives. Senator Ndume has remained consistent in his opposition to things that do not sit well with him. He is full of conviction and has remained unpretentious about his real sentiments; which nobody should expect the relevance seeker to understand, since it is a quality he is not endowed with. This has been the reason he always had one altercation or the other with each of Jonathan, Buhari, and now Tinubu.

He tried to use the usual tactic used by sympathizers of this government to discredit the very important issue raised by the senator. In an attempt to take away blame, he said the ‘problem’ this government is ‘solving’ were all created by Buhari. That is false. Every single problem Nigeria is facing under this government today is self-created by itself. They are three: Naira devaluation, ‘removal’ of petrol subsidy, and a lack of ability to manage inflation created by the two.

Bwala, thought that he could shout down the senator. First, he cannot; because even presidents, with the exclusive privilege of having the security apparatus at their disposal and every needed influence at his beck and call, failed to do that. Second, the factors that cause him to feel he has better understanding of things than Ndume is the  fallout of acquiring education in foreign schools.

They say education is a leveler, true; but it does not level up in wisdom and quality of thought. As such, Bwala thinks everyone lacks the ability to understand complex things. The problem of lack of wisdom is not that alone; Bwala now thinks he can understand things better than the senator and even educate him. Unfortunately, he doesn’t understand that he doesn’t understand.

You have a man who has been in the corridors of power for two decades, with a record of rising from the ashes and featuring, or even influencing the course of some of the most important turning points in the country’s politics, and another who feels, thanks to literacy, his thought processes are so sophisticated as to munch up decades of experience and thus form narratives the nation is waiting to receive.

Wise up Barrister.

-Kumalia writes from Abuja.