Reminiscing Over The Day Truth Sat Opposite Bwala -By Isaac Asabor

There is an African proverb that says: “If lies travel for twenty years, the truth will surely meet it in one day.” Few modern political spectacles illustrate this ancient wisdom more vividly than the now-viral interview involving Daniel Bwala, the Presidential Spokesperson on Policy Communication for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera.

What unfolded during that televised exchange was not merely a difficult interview. It was the kind of moment that exposes the fragile architecture of political dishonesty, the moment when carefully arranged narratives collide with documented reality. For many observers, it was less a debate than a public encounter between memory and evidence, between political reinvention and recorded history.

African wisdom has long warned that lies may run swiftly, but they never run forever. The elders captured this truth in the proverb: “Lies have short legs.” They may sprint ahead for a while, but sooner or later they stumble. Many Nigerians believe that this stumble was on full display when Daniel Bwala appeared weighed down by the burden of his own past words during that interview.

Among the Ika-speaking people of Delta and Edo States, there is a name, Okwuonyeche, which roughly means, “Your words will wait for you.” In other words, what a person says today may stand patiently in the shadows until the day it returns to confront him or her.  By that measure, Bwala’s words simply waited for him until that moment.

During the interview, Hasan confronted Bwala with several past statements he had made years earlier criticizing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, remarks made before Bwala switched political allegiance and became a defender of the very administration he once attacked. When those statements resurfaced, the encounter quickly became uncomfortable.

The difficulty was not merely that the interviewer asked tough questions. Tough questions are the oxygen of democracy. The real problem was the collision between past and present.

Africa has another proverb for such moments: “Your previous lies will contradict all your future truths.”

Whether one agrees with Bwala politically or not is beside the point. Politics everywhere allows for ideological evolution; people change their minds all the time. What the public finds harder to accept is not change, but denial of the past. When video clips, tweets, and documented statements exist, pretending they never happened becomes an exercise in futility. In the digital age, history keeps receipts. And receipts, once produced, speak louder than rhetoric.

Another proverb says: “A man who sells lies grows fat.” At first glance, this proverb appears cynical. It suggests that lying can be profitable. And, in truth, history confirms it. Many political careers have been built on strategic distortions, selective memory, and convenient narratives. For a time, such tactics work. The liar becomes popular, powerful, even celebrated. Loyal supporters cheer. Critics are dismissed. The illusion of invincibility grows. But the proverb contains a hidden warning: the prosperity of the liar is temporary.

It is like building a mansion on sand. The day the foundation shifts, the entire structure collapses at once. That is why another proverb warns: “Ninety-nine lies may help you, but the hundredth lie will hurt you.”

Political communication often operates on repetition. Say something often enough and it begins to sound like truth. But repetition cannot erase contradiction. Eventually the hundredth lie arrives, the moment when inconsistencies pile up so high that they cannot be ignored.

When that moment comes, the public does not merely question the latest claim. They question everything.

In fact, there is always a problem with false stories. African elders also remind us: “A false story has seven endings; a true story has one.” This proverb explains the psychological burden of dishonesty.

Truth is easy to remember because it does not change. Lies, however, demand constant maintenance. They require new explanations, revised versions, additional excuses. Each new fabrication must be carefully aligned with previous ones. Soon the storyteller becomes trapped inside his own narrative, and that was exactly what Bwala experienced the day he was interviewed by Mehdi Hassan.

Observers of the interview noticed exactly this pattern. Critics argued that Bwala struggled to reconcile earlier statements with his current position, oscillating between denial, deflection, and reinterpretation when confronted with evidence.

The spectacle was painful not only because of political disagreement but because it exposed a familiar pattern in Nigerian political culture: the belief that confidence can substitute for consistency. But confidence cannot erase contradictions.

One of the most piercing African proverbs on deception states: “You can win a woman with lies, but you cannot feed her with lies.” In other words, deception might achieve a short-term goal, but it cannot sustain a long-term reality.

Applied to politics, this proverb becomes a warning to governments and spokespersons alike. Propaganda may win applause for a season. Spin may delay accountability. But governance eventually confronts facts that cannot be manipulated, economic hardship, insecurity, and public dissatisfaction.

In the interview, security challenges and governance issues were among the subjects raised by Hasan. Critics argued that the responses lacked the precise data and preparation necessary for such an international forum.

When governments rely too heavily on narrative management rather than evidence, they risk creating spokespersons who can defend slogans but struggle to defend facts. And in the arena of global journalism, facts are the currency.

In fact, the short path of the liar is explanatory enough in a Tanzanian proverb which says, “The path of a liar is very short.” This does not necessarily mean that the liar is exposed immediately. Sometimes exposure takes years. Sometimes it takes decades. But the path always ends. The digital age has shortened that path dramatically. Old statements, forgotten speeches, archived videos, and social media posts are permanently preserved. A politician cannot outrun his own history anymore.

What once required investigative journalists now require only a simple online search. In that sense, the Bwala episode represents a larger shift in the relationship between politicians and truth. The modern public sphere remembers everything. And memory is the enemy of revisionism.

Perhaps the most poetic proverb of all says: “The end of a cow is beef; the end of a lie is grief.” Lies rarely end quietly. They end in embarrassment, scandal, resignation, or reputational damage.

Critics across Nigeria and beyond described the interview as embarrassing not only for Bwala but for the image of the country itself.

That reaction reveals something deeper about public expectations. Nigerians are not merely demanding loyalty from political representatives; they are demanding competence and credibility.

At this juncture, it is not out of place to remind spokespersons across various offices in Nigeria that they represent more than a government. They represent the intellectual seriousness of a nation. When that representation collapses under scrutiny, the embarrassment is collective.

In fact, the deeper lesson in this context is that most of us are focusing solely on Bwala, and by doing that we would miss the larger point. The reason for the foregoing view cannot be farfetched as this episode is not about one man. It is about a political culture in which ideological reversals are common and accountability is rare.

In Nigeria, politicians frequently move from one party to another, from critic to defender, from opposition warrior to government spokesperson. Such transitions are not inherently wrong. Democracies allow political realignment. What damages credibility is not change, but dishonesty about change.

A politician who openly says, “I used to believe this, but now I believe something different,” may still be respected. But a politician who denies his own past statements, even when they are played back on video invites ridicule. The ancestors anticipated this long before television existed. That is why they warned: “If lies travel for twenty years, the truth will surely meet it in one day.”

Without a doubt, truth always arrives.  African proverbs endure because they capture human behavior with remarkable accuracy. Long before modern journalism, before YouTube clips and viral interviews, African sages understood something fundamental about the human condition.

Without a doubt, truth is patience. It does not hurry. It does not shout. It simply waits. And when the moment comes, it arrives with devastating clarity.

The lesson for political actors everywhere is simple: reputation is easier to protect than to repair. Credibility, once fractured, becomes extraordinarily difficult to rebuild. Because once the public concludes that a man has lied repeatedly, even his genuine statements begin to sound suspicious. The ancestors said it best: “Your previous lies will contradict all your future truths.”

That is the tragedy of dishonesty. And that is the fate that awaits every lie, whether told in a village square, a parliamentary chamber, or a televised interview before the world.