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Al Jazeera apologised privately to me over Mehdi Hasan interview — Bwal
Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Policy Communication, Daniel Bwala, has revealed that international broadcaster Al Jazeera privately apologised to him over his controversial appearance on its Head to Head programme with journalist Mehdi Hasan but refused to make the apology public.
Bwala said the broadcaster’s refusal to issue a public apology prompted him to instruct his lawyers in England to file a defamation suit against the network.
The presidential aide disclosed this during an interview on Morayo Afolabi-Brown’s programme published on YouTube on Wednesday, several months after his March 2026 appearance on Al Jazeera.
During the interview with Hasan, Bwala was confronted with comments he had made against President Bola Tinubu while he was supporting former Vice President Atiku Abubakar before joining the Tinubu administration.
The interview generated widespread reactions at the time, with clips circulating on social media and sparking debate over the exchange between the two men.
Asked whether he sought an apology after the interview, Bwala said Al Jazeera admitted it should have handled aspects of the programme differently.
“They apologised to me privately. I said they should put it on social media. They said they will not put it on social media, it will affect their credibility, because it’s not just them, but their other programmers at the Al Jazeera network too,” he said.
According to Bwala, the substance of the apology centred on Al Jazeera’s failure to disclose before the interview that his credibility and his previous criticism of Tinubu would become a major focus of the discussion.
He said the broadcaster acknowledged that, based on its own editorial ethics, it ought to have informed him beforehand.
“The substance of the apology was that they should have told me that part of what they discussed with me was a talking point, that they were also going to interrogate me on my credibility for supporting the person I had attacked before.
“By their own ethics, they ought to have told me that, but they said they were sorry they didn’t,” Bwala said.
The presidential aide also accused Al Jazeera of editing the interview in a manner that favoured Hasan while removing portions that reflected positively on him.
According to him, the original recording lasted one hour and 30 minutes, but only 49 minutes were eventually aired.
“The deeper point is that they cut out the parts where I was fact-checking him and the crowd was clapping for me, and instead kept the parts where he was speaking and people were clapping for him,” he alleged.
Bwala further claimed that Hasan repeatedly played old clips of his previous statements without giving viewers the full context or allowing him enough opportunity to respond.
He also alleged that the broadcaster removed his opening remarks in which he had indicated he would reject questions outside the agreed focus of the interview.
Bwala said he sought independent opinions from media professionals after the interview, including British broadcaster Piers Morgan, whom he said he contacted through a third party.
According to him, those he consulted agreed that the handling of the programme did not meet accepted journalistic standards.
He argued that if Al Jazeera intended to challenge his previous comments, the interview should either have been conducted live or aired exactly as it was recorded without selective editing.
Bwala said he decided to pursue legal action after Al Jazeera declined his request to publish the apology.
“When they apologised, I said no, put it on social media. They refused. So I instructed my lawyers in England to go to court. The case is currently in court,” he said.
Explaining why he rejected the private apology, Bwala said his legal advisers concluded that the broadcaster’s conduct amounted to defamation of character.
“Because my advisers in England said it’s defamation of character,” he added.
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