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Olugbemi. Adeyinka Ogunleye
1 week ago
Overview
My few thoughts about Daniel Bwala's Interview on Medhi
Daniel Bwala was made to put up an embarrasing show. For a person of Bwala's standard, intellectual capacity and position as one of the Spox of President Tinubu, it was a disaster. 49 minutes show had about 40minutes on Bwala's personality and past choices. what a waste!
My question to Daniel is what was the attraction for the show in the first place. Daniel claimed he was courted for nearly 6months, was given an impression that the session was focused on governance and he never knew it was going to be about his own antecedents. There in lies the issue. If Daniel is right about this premise (and I believe he's telling the truth), then it goes to show the level of deceit of foreign media in their quest to shape the African narrative as they want it.
Medhi has been notorius for his own controversial stands and beliefs. Anti-west, Islamic-nations bias, stoking fires unnecessarily. I wonder the brand of journalism of this nature, where the guests are ambushed, embarassed and made to look bad… for what? Traffic, views, likes or shaped-narratives.
Lessons are to be learnt. Few thoughts of mine are
- Daniel Bwala, while he cannot undo his decisions and actions of the past in terms of change of parties (to PDP and back to APC, working for Tinubu) should own his past with his chest up. Articulate his points and communicate it with gusto. That he deried Tinubu in the past and now working for him is not new. It does not define him in the narratives his enemies want to confine him
- Daniel should be careful of which media platforms he attends. For example for the life of me, I will not attend AriseTV if rufai is on the Panel, meanwhile I will attend ChannelsTV. Inspite of the mutual hostility, Trump always refered to CNN as "Fake News" till people find out that the put out sometimes unverified news
- I am more disappointed in the Guests - Tunde Doherty of Financial Times journalist and Aisha Osori. Why on God's earth do we have our people run against your country on foreign platforms. How do you surrender yourselves to be judged by outsiders, just to project your country in bad light? you later wonder why foreigners have all the bad news to report on us
- Aisha started with a factually incorrect position; that Nigeria has no diplomatic presense in any of the major neighbouring capital hence accounting for insecurity? The same Nigeria that quelled the Coup in Cotonou? the same Nigeria that practically carried the Joint Military operations of 4 neighbouring countries (Chad, Niger, Mali and Cameroun) since PMB days that these other countries could not fulfill their own quota in terms of Finances and Hardware?
- Doherty talks about ideology; that there is no distinguishing ideology between parties. Cheap! I dare say it is a lazy man's attempt to paint all political parties in Nigeria in one brush. If APC could have all these reforms, which PDP had run away from during its rule; is that not borne out of the ideological leanings of the party.
Finally I will say this. Ruling party or opposition, our democracy can only be built and nurtured by us. We must protect it. Running abroad for validation either ways as Bwala, Aisha and Doherty's of this world will only amount in the West telling you you're sh*t. They will tell you about insecurity, while shootings and knife crimes goes unabated in their own countries. They will tell you we are corrupt, while monumental corruption is going on in their Health sectors for starters… they will tell you how bad you should see yourself, when they are probably as bad.
Yinka Ogunleye
