Killing The Deal: Bwala’s Ibadan Media Round Misadventure | By Sulaimon Olanrewaju

The quote, “Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising”, attributed to William (Bill) Bernbach, co-founder of the Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) Advertising Agency, perfectly captures Dr Daniel Bwala’s media round in Ibadan last week.

The Presidency, apparently worried by President Bola Tinubu’s sagging popularity in many parts of the country, dispatched Bwala, the President’s Special Adviser on Media and Policy Communication, to Oyo State to shore up the sitting president’s reputation ahead of the 2027 general elections, in which he will be seeking re-election.

Bwala’s two-pronged strategy was to pick three of the leading radio stations in Oyo State as his channel of reaching out to the people, and to discredit Governor Seyi Makinde as a means to achieve his goal of laundering his principal’s image.

Bwala’s expedition was part of APC’s strategy of winning the hearts and votes of Oyo State people in the ensuing election season. In the 2023 presidential election, the APC had a good showing in the state because of Governor Makinde’s support for the then candidate Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

But since Makinde has declared interest in the presidency and will be on the ballot in 2027, Oyo State looks highly unlikely for the president. Knowing that this would have a telling effect on the president’s overall performance, the president’s men and the APC have brought out all the tricks in the bag to debase, demean and diminish Governor Makinde all in a bid to sway the people away from him.

There have been series of media attacks veiled as objective interventions, but which on a closer look leave no one in doubt that they are hatchet jobs because their tone and tenor are neither organic nor authentic.

There have also been protests engineered with a view to rousing the people against the governor. But rather than all these injuring the governor’s public perception, they are actually enhancing it. The more they try to degrade Makinde, the more the people become enamored with him.

So, Bwala came to Ibadan to continue the ‘Pull Down Seyi Makinde By All Means’ project. His brief was clear: demonize Makinde to canonize Tinubu. He was on Splash FM, Crest FM and Fresh FM. Of the three, I was only able to monitor his Friday morning encounter with Mayor Isaac Brown on Fresh FM.

Brown apparently did not initially understand Bwala’s mission. The broadcast journalist was of the opinion that the presidential aide had come to Ibadan to market his principal and regale the people of Oyo State with what the man entrusted with the management of the country’s human and material resources had done to improve the life of the average citizen over the past 37 months. So, he tailored his questions towards unearthing the achievements of the president. But Bwala had another agenda.

When Brown asked Bwala how Nigerians were faring under President Tinubu, instead of the spokesperson giving a straightforward answer, he talked about the increase in allocation that governors have been receiving from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) and the increase in the allocation to local government councils.

Thinking the presidential aide did not have a grasp of the question, Brown talked about how the rising cost of living was impoverishing the populace and asked his guest what the Federal Government was doing to address it, but Bwala still stuck to his gun, and said Governor Makinde should be questioned by the people for holding on to local government allocations.

That became his refrain. For every question he was asked, Bwala found a way to bring in the governor and the local government funds. He must have left Abuja with the belief that the local government fund issue was the last straw that would break the camel’s back.

He obviously thought that by playing the local government allocation card he could easily turn the people of Oyo State against their governor. But Bwala failed woefully as about 70 per cent of the callers condemned his evasive tactic. They accused him of parrying the questions put to him instead of answering them.

Mayor Isaac Brown deserves commendation for not surrendering the control of his programme to Bwala. By deflecting questions and giving a narrative that aligned with his agenda, Bwala’s plot was to pilot the programme to suit his purpose. He wanted Brown to steer the programme, not according to its philosophy, but in accordance with his mission of demonizing Makinde to canonize Tinubu.

For the record, despite the politics of scapegoatism being played by the presidency and the APC, local government financial autonomy is still an inconclusive matter because in spite of the July 11, 2024 Supreme Court judgment, which gave full autonomy to the third tier of government, Section 162 (6), (7) and (8) of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution as amended are still in force.

The subsections state as follows:
(6) Each State shall maintain a special account to be called “State Joint Local Government Account” into which shall be paid all allocations to the Local Government Councils of the State from the Federation Account and from the Government of the State.

(7) Each State shall pay to Local Government Councils in its area of jurisdiction such proportion of its total revenue on such terms and in such manner as may be prescribed by the National Assembly.

(8) The amount standing to the credit of Local Government Councils of a State shall be distributed among the Local Government Councils of that State on such terms and in such manner as may be prescribed by the House of Assembly of the State.

So, until Section 162 and the subsections are amended, direct payment to local governments would be a contravention of the constitution. That is why whether it is in Lagos State or Ogun State or Katsina State or Borno State or Ebonyi State or Cross River State, local government funds are still routed through the states.

To clear the air, in Oyo State, the State Joint Local Government Account takes care of the wages of local government staff, primary school teachers, Primary Health Care staff, security issues, the gratuity and pensions of retired local government employees as well as local government projects, among other things.

By all intents and purposes, the APC’s logic of deploying media saturation to demonize Governor Makinde is not only annoyingly warped, it is also gnawingly infantile. I consider it an insult that the APC could think that by pushing a puerile narrative about Governor Makinde the party can worm its way into the hearts of the people of Oyo State. Come on, APC.

The APC needs to know that in this election cycle what will determine who gets the people’s votes is the answer to the question: Is Nigeria better off today than it was before the advent of President Bola Tinubu?

The answer is not hanging in the air, it is evident in the growing hardship, worsening insecurity, deteriorating misery index, burgeoning out-of-school-children population, and the rising citizen disenchantment.

So, despite all his efforts, Bwala’s media round in Ibadan was a misadventure. It was an ironic advertisement for his principal’s disappointing performance. It was a telling display of his principal’s indifference to the nation’s power problem. It was a stark reminder of his principal’s inability to keep his promises to the people. It was a clear promotion of his principal’s unpreparedness to change the fortune of the nation.

It was a glaring display of his principal’s apathetic disposition to the plights of Nigerian youths. It was a sardonic show of his principal’s helplessness in stemming corruption in the country.

Bwala was sent to Ibadan to deodorize his principal and clothe him in borrowed robes to make him attractive and acceptable to the people of Oyo State. But rather than seal the deal, Bwala killed the deal. His mission in Ibadan was a complete catastrophe as his strategy collapsed on his head.

Dr Olanrewaju is the Special Adviser (Media) and the Chief Press Secretary to the Executive Governor of Oyo State.