By Aare Amerijoye DOT.B.
There are political journeys that demonstrate conviction, political journeys that demonstrate evolution, and then there are political journeys that leave the public wondering whether the destination was chosen first and the principles adjusted afterwards.
Daniel Bwala appears increasingly trapped in the third category.
His latest political evolution would ordinarily be dismissed as nothing more than another Nigerian politician changing sides—except that Bwala is not merely a politician. He has deliberately positioned himself as a public commentator, political analyst and, today, a senior presidential communicator. That makes the consistency of his arguments a legitimate subject of public scrutiny.
The problem is not that Bwala moved from the opposition to the government.
People are allowed to change their minds.
The problem is that the man defending today’s position is the same man whose yesterday’s arguments are still available for Nigerians to examine.
And Nigerians are examining them.
The most damaging moment came when Bwala appeared on Al Jazeera’s Head to Head programme and was confronted with statements he had made when he was aligned with Atiku Abubakar’s political camp. The interview forced an uncomfortable collision between the Bwala of yesterday and the Bwala of today. His explanation was essentially that he had been in opposition and that the job of the opposition was to oppose.
That explanation may satisfy a political operative.
It should not satisfy a country searching for intellectual consistency.
Because opposition does not require a person to abandon every principle he once professed the moment he crosses to the other side.
If yesterday’s criticism of Tinubu was based on facts, why did those facts suddenly become irrelevant?
If yesterday’s assessment of Nigeria’s problems was sincere, what exactly changed?
Did the economy improve overnight?
Did insecurity disappear?
Did the political facts change?
Or did the political address of the person making the argument change?
These are legitimate questions.
And this is precisely why Bwala is jinxed with inconsistency.
The word “jinxed” is deliberate. His greatest difficulty today is not that he has a new political employer. It is that his old political record keeps following him into his new political assignment.
The internet has become Nigeria’s political memory.
Statements do not disappear because their authors change parties.
Interviews do not evaporate because politicians acquire new titles.
Tweets do not become irrelevant because their authors are appointed presidential advisers.
The archive remains.
And Bwala’s archive is unusually rich.
He was once associated with Atiku’s political campaign and was identified as a spokesman for the former Vice President’s 2023 presidential bid. Today, as Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Media and Policy Communication, he is one of the administration’s prominent defenders.
That transformation is itself not a crime.
But it creates a higher burden of explanation.
When the same man who once stood on one side of a political argument suddenly becomes one of the strongest voices on the opposite side, Nigerians are entitled to ask for the intellectual bridge between the two positions.
Where is the bridge?
That question became even more important after his Al Jazeera encounter, because the international interview placed his old statements and his current responsibilities on the same stage.
That was not an attack from Atiku’s camp.
That was history interrogating the present.
And history is a particularly difficult opponent because it cannot be intimidated, appointed, dismissed or accused of being sponsored by the opposition.
History simply produces the record.
Now Bwala is increasingly turning his fire on Atiku.
He has argued that Atiku and the opposition coalition do not pose a serious threat to President Tinubu in 2027, even invoking the 2023 election result as evidence that Tinubu defeated Atiku despite the structures available to the former Vice President at the time.
Again, he is entitled to make that argument.
But political arguments become less persuasive when the person making them has not adequately reconciled his own previous political assessments.
The irony is profound.
Bwala now asks Nigerians to believe the Tinubu he defends while Nigerians remember the Tinubu he once attacked.
He asks Nigerians to doubt the political viability of Atiku while Nigerians remember that he once stood beside Atiku’s political project.
He asks Nigerians to accept his current political interpretation while the internet continues to preserve his previous interpretations.
This is not about Atiku.
It is not even fundamentally about Tinubu.
It is about credibility.
A man may change his political allegiance.
A man may change his party.
A man may change his candidate.
But when a man changes his argument, he owes the public an explanation.
And the explanation cannot simply be that he was once in opposition.
Because opposition may explain why a politician criticises government.
It does not explain why every previous conviction should suddenly become obsolete.
There is an important distinction between political loyalty and intellectual honesty.
A presidential aide is expected to defend the administration that employs him. That is understandable. Bwala himself has argued that defending the Tinubu administration is now part of his official responsibility.
But defending a government does not require rewriting one’s own history.
It does not require pretending that yesterday’s statements never existed.
And it certainly does not require Nigerians to forget.
Perhaps the strongest defence Bwala could offer is not to deny the past but to own it.
He could simply say:
“Yes, I said those things. I believed them at the time. Here is what I know today that I did not know then.”
That would be intellectually respectable.
That would be evolution.
That would be maturity.
But when yesterday’s statements are treated as though they were somebody else’s words, the credibility problem becomes larger than the original political disagreement.
This is why the Al Jazeera interview was significant.
It was not merely an uncomfortable television appearance.
It exposed the central dilemma of Bwala’s political career: the difficulty of defending the present without being confronted by the past.
And that dilemma will become even more severe as 2027 approaches.
The more aggressively Bwala attacks Atiku, Obi and the emerging opposition coalition, the more Nigerians will inevitably revisit what he himself said about these same political actors—and about Tinubu—when his political circumstances were different.
The more he tells Nigerians that Tinubu cannot be defeated, the more Nigerians will ask what he believed when he was on the other side.
The more he presents today’s political narrative as settled truth, the more the archive will ask whether it was equally true when he was making the opposite argument.
That is the jinx.
Bwala’s problem is not that he changed political sides. His problem is that his words keep changing sides with him.
And in a democracy, that is a dangerous burden for anyone who wants to be taken seriously as a political voice.
Because Nigerians may forgive a politician for changing his mind.
They may even forgive him for changing his party.
But they are much less likely to forgive a man who expects them to forget what he said yesterday simply because he has found a new audience today.
The past has not abandoned Daniel Bwala.
It is sitting beside him every time he speaks.
And increasingly, it is speaking louder than he is.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B.
Director General, The Narrative Force
