Daniel Bwala’s Offence Against Decency

 By Alade Rotimi-John 

Irish born playwright and critic-at-large, Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was an intolerable thorn in the flesh of the British establishment for more than half a century. He is popularly quoted as saying that when a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty. 

 *Daniel Bwala and Mehdi Hasan

Before a stupefied global audience, Daniel Bwala who doubles as President Tinubu’s Adviser on Policy Communications was  deplorably dull and awful as he outrageously defended his bewildering actions in office as being in the role of performing his duty or in the tour of duty. 

Bwala’s self-satisfied carriage or his self-appointed status as a world-class communicator invoked the wrath of a wide assortment of detractors as Mehdi Hasan, his host on the Al Jazeera talk-show, exposed him to jeers and derision; and as a mere Nigerian local champion, after all. Hasan dexterously stirred Bwala into disgustingly denying the statements he had made ostensibly in the mood of a sense of righteous outrage. 

Hasan was fastidious about the smallest details of how Bwala had taken a dive into a cesspool of lie-telling or tarradiddle. He may have imagined that he could help retrieve Bwala from the quagmire by leading him to give a less visceral reason for his awful actions under review. But in his characteristic “the heavens may fall” fanaticism, Bwala ignored his host’s soft landing offers. He plunged on vulgarly, denying every statement of fact he had made in the past and pledging his honour in mock piety. 

Even as Hasan moved Bwala almost to the verge of irritation, Bwala refused to be helped to redeem himself. Hasan’s sense of humour was enlivening; the spirit of delightful journalism was demonstrated in the jokes he played on Bwala so just Bwala may loosen up.

For where? 
Bwala had self-aggrandisingly sent clips in the form of videos to Hasan as proof of his serious preparation for the Al Jazeera interview weeks ahead of the event. 

When Bwala was irritatingly denying his knowledge of events in the public domain or of things concerning his principal’s office, Hasan perplexingly asked Bwala: “What have you been researching all these days? What was your preparation for this interview all about?” Bwala was to cynically confess after his abysmally-poor performance that he was expecting a cocktail session consisting of a complacent, off-the-mark, Nigerian-style question-and-answer drivel. 

Hasan was not scheduled to ask him questions about his history, character or maudlin wit, Bwala quipped. Hasan had not given him notice to that effect. He boasted he could take on any interviewer on the global stage grit-for-grit and was not afraid of an encore if it could be arranged even now. 

There will appear to be two ways of avoiding the kind of debacle that was the lot of Bwala in London. One way is to dislike the event and so shun it. The other is to avoid an anchor like Hasan. Bwala enjoys a local reputation as a brilliant image-maker. He was the toast of television anchors way back in Nigeria until he, like Mungo Park, discovered Mehdi Hasan. 

Give it to effervescent Bwala, even at his lowest moment, he was able to muster a sardonic, inconsolable smile as if nothing had happened. But Bwala had pitifully allowed himself to be a figure around whom controversy swirls like water in a pond even as he has become the butt of silly jokes, of motor park touts’ derision, and of comical skits on how not to be consistent or, rather, how to be consistently inconsistent. 

One hopes he recovers soon as he takes solace in the summation of a Mr Alexander Harvey regarding society’s unlearned perception of modern literature as being  “ … the creation, for the most part, of disreputable characters, many of whom look rather seedy, some of whom were drunken black-guards, a few of whom were swindlers or perpetual borrowers, rowdies, gamblers, or slaves to a drug.” 

Bwala should be comforted as he comes to the grim recognition of the fact that many of his critics are only a little better than him, if at all. His employers too are cast in his mould. “Iru kan-un kan-un”, my people will say in sad reflection. Only context may have shifted; and context matters all the time as Bwala’s ecstatic refrain reminds us every time. 

Bwala has offered truth-telling as a rare virtue among his tribe of professionals. Cavalierly-shifting allegiances or embarrassingly-conflictive policy positions are their trademark. 

By that egregious fall at London, we may have learnt, as identified by John Dryden (1631-1700) that “They who write (or speak) ill, and they who ne’er durst write, Turn critics out of revenge or spite.”  Bwala may have been foreshadowed by Dryden. 

Bwala’s upturned “road to Damascus experience” is instructive. As has become popularly understood in Nigeria, a “stomach infrastructure” calling has beckoned on many otherwise suave gentlemen to somersault many times regarding their earlier-professed philosophy or worldview. 

A further dim view is to deny any intellectual or moral content to the profession of image-making or public relations particularly as it pertains to political communication. But we are frequently confronted with pretensions to intellectual depth or breadth.

Many public relations practitioners by whatever name called e.g. Media Adviser and so on, are mere commonplace concerning stark fickleness and rambling anyhowness. The impermanence of their art and their possession of an improportionately-large dose of human emotions offer them to be ready pawns in the chessboard of their employer who they are generally better and far more resourceful than. 

The reduction of a profession to a work requiring shifting circumstances or giddy allegiances is unhelpful to a clear understanding of the mechanics of the profession – any profession. 

The particular delimitation or de-marketing offered by Bwala in his disastrous London outing while defensible as a basis for individual study or as reflective only of an individual’s character will ultimately tend to paint a general lewd picture of the profession of image-making. 

It is however one-sided to study unit performance to the exclusion of in-built institutional systems. We must not neglect the study of a coherent whole for us to have a proper or broad view. 

Whatever our takeaway from the Bwala London experience, the profession of public relations practice in politics must be welcomed by all who seek better clarity in the governance communications sphere even as people are influenced in their adoption of ideas by its apparent appeal respecting its words and phrases which must be understood semantically. 

The value of the public communicator can hardly be overrated even as aesthetic thought is the practitioner’s forte and truth-telling his armour or mandate. 

Bwala may have fumbled big time in London as he maligned us all but we must recognise him as a product of a system that is sunk in bold-face lie-telling and in implacable fidelity to below level performance. 

Bwala has offended our collective sense of decency.

*Rotimi-John is a lawyer and commentator on public affairs (lawgravitas@gmail.com)