The dusts raised by the reshufflement in the media team of President Bola Tinubu may not settle soon as there are feelers that Daniel Bwala, Special Adviser on Policy Communication to the president may quit the role.
Earlier appointed as Special Adviser on Media and Public Communication (State House) on November 14, Bwala, who had claimed he was the official spokesperson to the president was demoted four days later and will now be working outside the villa.
Already, there are speculations that Bwala may quit as the new assigned to him, which was announced by Bayo Onanuga, the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy was not what he bargained for when he decided to work with the president.
Bwala didn’t respond to to calls and text message sent by our correspondent yesterday to enquire about his next move or whether he accept the new role assigned to him.
However, a close associate of the PDP presidential campaign spokesperson said Bwala is awaiting the return of President Tinubu from the G-20 summit in Brazil before making his decision known.
“ The fact is that, he had series of meetings with Mr. President before accepting to work for him. The announcement was that he will serve as the Special Adviser on Media and Public Communication (State House). That means he will be working in the villa”.
“He (Bwala) is a lawyer and he knows the power of words. For him to have said he is the spokesperson to the president, then it means that was what he was promised. He couldn’t have just woken up and arrogate the position of spokesperson to himself”.
“Right now, I think he is waiting for the president to return from the G-20 summit and then have a discussion with him on the new developments. From there, he will take the decision on whether to continue in his new assignment or quit.
Also speaking with TheScrutiny, Festus Asiriuwa, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo state said Bwala shot himself in the foot by trying to upstage the president’s longtime allies such as Onanuga and Sunday Dare.
“I will say that he has himself to blame by making the same mistake the former spokesperson, Ajuri Ngelale made. He should have calm down and get his role defined properly before addressing the press. He was too eager to displace other media aides of the president and assume the role of spokesperson in order to have unrestricted access to the president but he has been taught a bitter lesson”.
“Do you know how many years Onanuga and Sunday Dare have been with the president. These are long time allies of the president even before he became Lagos state governor in 1999. How can an Ajuri or Bwala think they can just displace them overnight?”.
“I think Daniel Bwala got carried away by the frequents visits to President Tinubu. That was when they are trying to bring him to their side. Now that he has accepted to work as an aide to the president and he has been pushed from the state house to outside the villa, he may not even have access to the president again”.
In his reaction to Bwala’s redesignation by the presidency, Reuben Abati, a former presidential media aide advised Bwala to return to the United Kingdom (UK) and focus on his PhD programme.
Speaking on Arise Television, Abati said “Daniel Bwala is my good friend. My advice to him is that, he says he has been working on his PhD programme in the United Kingdom. Let him not get carried away with this ‘kokoro tin j’efo. Let him pay more attention to his PhD programme because he may just find that he is in the midst of a Yoruba Lokan synthesis”
