Fintiri : The flop and the frustrated feelings of failure- Bala Ibrahim

I watched with keen interest, few days back, the interview with the governor of Adamawa state Mr. Ahmadu Fintiri on Channels TV, wherein he boosted of the achievements of his government in Adamawa State, and the overall performance of his party, the PDP in Nigeria. In fact, Fintiri was courageously confident, based on the antecedents of performance, that come 2023, Nigerians would bring back the PDP.

He made comparative analysis of the situation of Nigeria when PDP was in power, and what obtains now, by concluding that they have done competitively better than the APC, as a consequence of which he is confidently convinced of a comeback.

I dismissed the governor’s submission as a baseless propaganda, that is normal with most politicians that happen to find themselves at the vantage position of the microphone, and didn’t want to talk about it until this morning, when a friend sent some pictures of what Nigeria was few years back.

Looking at those pictures, vis a vis what Nigeria is todaI watched with keen interest, few days back, the interview with the governor of Adamawa state Mr. Ahmadu Fintiri on Channels TV, wherein he boosted of the achievements of his government in Adamawa State, and the overall performance of his party, the PDP in Nigeria. In fact, Fintiri was courageously confident, based on the antecedents of performance, that come 2023, Nigerians would bring back the PDP.y, no sane person would feel nostalgic, or wistful of such a condition as to even think of a return to that period.

Indeed the pictures sent by my friend came with a puzzling question, thus, Is this what Fintiri is asking Nigerians to consider in voting PDP in 2023, when he said they handled the economy better and life was good for Nigeria? The pictures painted gory pictures, showing violence and bloodshed all over Nigeria.

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To buttress the position of the pictorials posted by my friend, I perused through the findings of a research on the prevalence and nature of terrorist attacks in Nigeria during the Presidency of Goodluck Jonathan, and below is an extract from a publication in the International journal of law and public administration:

“The administration of Nigerian President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, was marked by increase in the country’s violence and frequency of terrorist attacks. Using the START dataset, the study analyzed data over 84 months to examine the effect of Jonathan’s presidency on terrorism in Nigeria. The study found a wide variation in the number of terrorist attacks between 2009 and 2015. The full presidency phase experienced a markedly more significant number of terrorist attacks than the post-presidency, acting presidency, and pre-presidency phases. On average, the full presidency and post-presidency phases experienced significantly greater rates of terrorist attacks per month than the acting presidency and pre-presidency phases. The casualty rates were consistent with this variation except that post-presidency appeared the bloodiest of all four phases. The study also revealed that Boko Haram was responsible for most terrorist attacks and casualties during the administration.”

From the foregone, it is evident that the tenure of President Jonathan of the PDP, was enmeshed in the crisis of insurgency, occasioned by Boko Haram attacks. Movements, especially between one State to the other in northern Nigeria was a nightmare. Attacks were made at the most fortified buildings and barracks. Sandbags and security checkpoints were all over the place, just as bombing almost became a commonplace of the public life in those days.

It is strange to hear Governor Ahmadu Fintiri giving a different picture of Nigeria then. In that interview, Governor Fintiri said, contrary to what obtained in their time, meaning under the PDP, people can no longer travel by road now in Nigeria. I guess he was referring to the criminality of banditry, kidnappings and similar behaviors that are forbidden by law.

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Although Governor Fintiri had attempted to take over the moderation of the program from Seun Okinbaloye, who puts his feet down, by telling him that his status is that of a guest, who should be answering questions and not asking questions, but I wished Seun had obliged him. If he did, the questions to ask Governor Fintiri would have been only two, the first of which is, when last did he see fuel queues at the filling stations? Even if Fintiri had attempted to be ungodly, his answer must necessarily be in the negative. The second is to ask what is the corruption index of Nigeria today? Again, he would be compulsorily compelled to give PMB and the APC a pass mark.

By some curious coincidence, just a day after the interview with Governor Ahmadu Fintiri, where he was blowing the trumpet of the sanity of his party, the PDP, the Nigerian Government announced the listing of PDP’s ex minister Diezani’s buildings, jewelleries’, under-wears and other corruptly acquired valuables for sale. Other listed property include those belonging to the late Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, who by chance, came from the same state with Governor Ahmadu Fintiri.

Nothing can be more embarrassing to a regime than harboring a woman with such propensity to steal, to the extent of keeping a collection of such shamefully expensive lingerie.

Governor Fintiri made efforts to paint the APC as an inactive and ineffective substitute to the PDP, by implying that the APC leadership is the architect of banditry and kidnapping in Nigeria today, but the question to ask him is, When did kidnapping, especially school children’s kidnapping start in Nigeria? Is it with the coming of this government?

If Governor Fintiri is interested in history, he may be pleased to learn that between the 14th and 15th of April 2014, 276, mostly Christian female students, aged from 16 to 18 years, were kidnapped by Boko Haram from the Government Girls Secondary School Chibok in Borno State.

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Borno State is next to Adamawa state, the State Governor Fintiri is leading today. The dastardly act happened under the leadership of the PDP.

When asked about the brouhaha on whether or not to name bandits as terrorists, Governor Fintiri said his state has no bandits, so he has no business getting involved with that nomenclature. The only problem of his state is insurgency and that is now a talk of the past.

Governor Fintiri was smart by half. He refused to say he has no control over the army or the police. He refused to give credit to the APC Government, that has brought IGP Alkali Usman Baba, the police promoter of kinetic and non kinetic methods of targeting the twin problems of banditry and insurgency, one of which was bedeviling his Adamawa state community.

So if the truth must be told, Nigerians would not want to go back the path being prescribed by Fintiri, because it sounds like a flop, and the frustrated feelings of a party to a failed fiasco.

Ibrahim, a media advisor writes from Abuja