Why I Criticised President Tinubu, By Bwala

LAGOS – Daniel Bwala, Special Ad­viser to the President on Media and Policy Commu­nications, stated that he was criticising President Bola Tinubu because he was in opposition and that he changed his mind to start supporting Tinubu on Janu­ary 10, 2024.

Bwala, who spoke on Arise TV on Tuesday, stated that he was criticising the president to fulfil his role as an opposition, stressing that the moment he had a meet­ing with Tinubu for over two hours, his perspective about his administration changed.

He said, “I was in the op­position. In case you don’t know, the role of the opposi­tion is to oppose the govern­ment. In doing so, you deem­phasise the strength of the government and empha­sise your strength. Where they have strength, you’ll come to argue their matter, they’ll rest their case on their strength and amplify the weakness of the oppo­sition. I made a decision on the 10th of January after I visited the president, from that day till date I speak well of the president and I sup­port his activities.”

Speaking further, Bwala said, “I criticised the ad­ministration because I was in the opposition. When I made the decision to sup­port the president, I decided to pay attention to his poli­cy, talk about the manifesto and to further do research. In doing so, I tried to look at where there is for exam­ple, failure, I tried to know why. For example there was a time there was food infla­tion. I tried to look at what was actually the cause of the food inflation. I real­ised there was a disaster in Mubi, Adamawa, and then the insecurity in the North- West. So the research was to find the reason for what­ever is the policy, the rea­son behind the policy and then we have for example a misinterpretation of imple­mentation of the policy. We came out and gave our per­spective. Government is not perfect and no government will ever be perfect. Govern­ment is a work in progress. At every point in time the government accesses what it does, takes inputs from Nigerians, improves upon it and moves forward. There’s nothing magical about ev­erything I said before and what I’m saying now. I said it in my capacity as opposi­tion. As an opposition I op­posed the government but as someone supporting the government I speak for the government.”