Presidential aide, Daniel Bwala, has claimed that Al Jazeera privately apologised to him over his controversial interview with Mehdi Hasan but refused to issue a public apology.
Bwala disclosed this during an interview on Morayo Afolabi-Brown’s programme published on YouTube on Wednesday, months after his appearance on Al Jazeera’s Head to Head in March 2026.
He said the broadcaster admitted it failed to inform him that part of the interview would focus on questioning his credibility over his past criticism of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu before he later became one of his supporters.
“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,” Bwala said.
According to him, Al Jazeera admitted it should have disclosed beforehand that his previous comments against Tinubu would form part of the interview.
“The substance of the apology was that they should have told me 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 added.
Bwala further alleged that the programme, which lasted about one hour and 30 minutes, was edited down to 49 minutes in a manner that favoured Hasan.
He accused the network of removing portions where he challenged Hasan’s claims and received applause from the audience while retaining segments that portrayed the journalist more favourably.
“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.
The presidential aide also claimed that Hasan repeatedly played old clips of his past comments without giving viewers the full context or allowing him to respond adequately.
Bwala said he instructed his lawyers in England to institute legal proceedings after Al Jazeera declined to make its apology public.
“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.
He added that his legal advisers believed the broadcaster’s conduct amounted to defamation of character.
