VIDEO: Al Jazeera has apologised to me over Head-to-Head interview — Bwala

Special Adviser to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Policy Communication, Daniel Bwala, has said Al Jazeera privately apologised to him over his controversial appearance on the network’s Head to Head programme.

Bwala, however, said the international broadcaster refused his demand to issue the apology publicly, a move he said pushed him to direct his lawyers in England to file a defamation suit against the network.

He made the disclosure during an interview on Morayo Afolabi-Brown’s programme published on YouTube on Wednesday, months after his March 2026 appearance on Al Jazeera, where interviewer Mehdi Hasan questioned him over his past criticism of President Bola Tinubu during the period he backed former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.

Responding to a question on whether he sought an apology from Hasan after the interview, Bwala said Al Jazeera admitted wrongdoing but declined to make its apology public.

“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.

Bwala said the apology was tied to the network’s failure to inform him in advance that part of the interview would focus on his credibility and his earlier comments about Tinubu.

“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,” he said.

He added that he sought the views of media analysts on the interview, including British broadcaster Piers Morgan, whom he said he contacted through a third party, and that they agreed the handling of the programme was improper.

“If you’re bold, if you call yourself a journalist, a fact-checker, you run your programme live and let people judge live.

“If you’re thinking straight, that’s what you’d do. You took creative control of the programme. You made a recorded programme. Ethics demanded you publish it exactly as it was recorded,” he said.

Bwala further alleged that the interview was edited in a way that favoured Hasan, saying the original session 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 said.

He also accused Hasan of replaying clips of his past comments without giving viewers the full context.

“He’d ask me a question, I’d deny it, then he’d play the old clip. We call that ‘cut and joined’ in media. After doing that, which amounts to a smear campaign, he didn’t give me the chance to react to it.

“Instead, he let it appear that I was simply asked a question, denied it, was shown the clip, denied it again, was shown another clip, and denied it again,” he said.

Bwala said Al Jazeera also edited out his opening statement in which he had made it clear he would reject questions about his previous remarks if the interview departed from the agreed subject.

“He removed that part, because if he’d left it in, anyone watching would understand that I had already answered the question upfront, and that my later denials were a response to his repeated bringing it up. That’s where the unethical conduct of a professional issue arose,” he said.

According to him, the matter ended up in court after Al Jazeera rejected his insistence on a public 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.

Asked why he chose legal action instead of accepting the private apology, Bwala said his legal advisers in England considered the network’s conduct defamatory.

“Because my advisers in England said it’s defamation of character,” he said.