By Dr. Terhemba Shija
William Shakespeare could have called it the “Taming of the Shrew.” Yesterday’s appearance of Daniel Bwala, Special Adviser to President Tinubu on Public Affairs on Aljazeera television is being described variously in Nigeria as shameful, embarrassing, disastrous or whatever negative adjective possible.
Ordinarily, Bwala is a brilliant star that shines on all skies irrespective of how cloudy or clear. It was simply not his day. The Al-jazeera interviewer Mehdi Hasan roasted him silly in almost all the issues raised.
Aljezeera is hardly the first choice of propaganda medium for a Nigerian government. We were raised with the consciousness of Western values and aesthetics. We live under thick suffocating fumes of the CNN, the BBC or other Western cable television that becloud us from seeking knowledge beyond American exceptionalism and sundry imperialist issues canvassed by them..
Something struck me after watching the interview that there could now be a deliberate shift in geopolitical focus arising from the new war in the middle East. It was too intentionally meticulous about Nigeria and its secrets to resist the Afrocentric bent of the station’s ideology.
This I guess could lead to a shift of interest in television viewership in Nigeria from the occidental to the oriental, particularly as America’s war with Iran rages on.
Just as much as we should expect a certain measure of balanced reportage on the war from Al-jazeera, Daniel Bwala’s interview with the marverick Mehdi Hasan provides a catharsis of sorts for me and I guess many other viewers. With its home in the vicinity of the war, Aljazeera should naturally become the alternative platform to provide authentic news and alternative ideology for the wretched of Africa.
For some time now, Bwala and his clan of pseudo intellectuals comprising, notably, people like Festus Keyamo, Femi Fani-Kayode, and Reno Omokiri, has held Nigeria by the jugular, helping corrupt politicians explain the inexplicable and defend the indefensible.
These are characters who audaciously faced the cameras, without fear of litigation, pronounced unequivocally that Tinubu was a drug baron, a kleptocrat as governor of Lagos state, and the worst tax fraudster in Nigeria. Yet these are the same fellows who now eloquently deny they ever said so or accuse people of either misleading or misquoting them.
What you cannot take away from them is their guts, oratory, good looks, sound diction, and exquisite rendition with a knack for inner logic but paradoxical morality. These are the same spin doctors persistently working to convince Nigerians that the removal of oil subsidy and its resultant poverty, hunger and deprivation were necessary signals of a great economy in future. So while Nigerians are currently in their third year of enduring torture, these dudes continue to revel in obscene fun and mockery of the common man.
Their critical manipulative and creative imagination is a career of of its own, and a prestigious one at that. They have access to prime time television in Nigeria where they churn out lies without binking an eye and without consequences.
Journalists at home, except of course Rufai Oseni of Arise television approch and few others continue to handle these spokespersons with awe and trepidation. Mehdi Hasan of Aljazeera mercifully appears with the instrument of dictating their lies, deceit and double deals with politicians. The result has been pleasurably devastating.
But what do they care? Bwala and his soulmates are in high demand in the Nigerian political arena. They possess the verbal AK47s, the syntactic swords, the semantic spears, and the artillery of bows and arrows to browbeat any foe for the political pay masters.
Bravo to them for their successes so far. They live affluent lifestyles either in Lagos, Abuja, Dubai or metropolitan capitals of Europe and America. Whose son growing up in this generation would resist the lure of also training himself in the art of doublespeak?
Isn’t Keyamo now a senior cabinet minister; Bwala, a presidential adviser; Omokiri and Fani-Kayode ambassadors in Mexico and Germany, respectively?
It is gratifying that the Aljazeera television has chosen to exhibit real professionalism by shaming these irrepressible characters in a spectacular manner. The algorithms of television viewership, as far as I understand how the media works, will now pull many Nigerians to Aljazeera.
I honestly believe too that Aljazeera would henceforth become a more believable alternative medium to also understand the atrocities of the unjust America-Israeli war against Iran.
