Bwala says Al Jazeera privately apologised to him over Mehdi Hasan interview

Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Policy and Communications, Daniel Bwala has disclosed that he is suing Al Jazeera in the United Kingdom, claiming the broadcaster privately apologised for its handling of his interview with journalist Mehdi Hasan but refused to issue a public apology.

Bwala made the revelation during an interview on Morayo Afolabi-Brown’s show, published on YouTube on Wednesday, months after his appearance on Al Jazeera’s Head to Head programme in March 2026.

The interview drew widespread attention after Hasan repeatedly confronted Bwala with past remarks in which he criticised President Bola Tinubu while serving as a spokesperson for former Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar.

Speaking on the programme, Bwala said Al Jazeera admitted it had breached its own editorial standards by failing to inform him that part of the interview would focus on questioning his credibility over his previous comments about Tinubu.

“They apologised to me privately. I said they should put it on social media. They said they will not put it on social media because it will affect their credibility, not just theirs but that of other programmers at the Al Jazeera network too,” he said.

According to Bwala, the broadcaster acknowledged that it should have disclosed in advance that his past criticism of Tinubu would form part of the interview.

“The substance of the apology was that they should have told me 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.

Bwala said he rejected the private apology and instructed his lawyers in England to institute legal proceedings after the network declined to apologise publicly.