The campaign season is truly here. One can feel it in the toxified airwaves in Adamawa where aspirants are trying to outdo each other in castigating the sitting governor with the hope of earning the sympathy of the electorates in next year’s elections.
It appears the new currency for votes in Adamawa gubernatorial contest come 2023, is painting the governor black instead of telling the electorates what to do differently.
When you listen to the radio in Adamawa state, you begin to wander whether any of the plethora of candidates has any manifesto that addresses the perceived shortcomings of the current governor. It makes me scared – if this is a reflection of our crop of leaders, then all hope is lost.
The airwaves are full of braggadocio and short on substance. We have heard of how ‘provincial’ Fintiri is in contrast to others who are cosmopolitan; we have been assailed with how ‘connected’ some of the aspirants are while the governor has limited horizon.
It makes me wonder with all the ‘beautiful’ CVs I see on parade, why is my state still celebrating the provision of basic infrastructure in this century? With the national and international ‘connections’ and ‘exposures’, how is it that no one can point to any landmark achievement or benefit to the state – both corporately and individually?
With such rich CVs, why do they need to be selling themselves at this point? It tells you one thing – they are not known because they were never at any point ‘connected’ to the people of the state. They have been living on Cloud 9, and only just remembered that they came from somewhere – now that they needed political power.
With Fintiri’s ‘provincial’ outlook and ‘limited horizon’, which our nouvea riche are brandishing against him, as if that is a crime, he has succeeded in ‘connecting’ with the people in such a way that our cosmopolitan elites can only dream of and envy.
Long before contesting in 2019, Fintiri has been part of the political canvas in the state and, therefore, grounded in the affairs of the people. A typical example is how he is investing in Agribusiness – an area that is supposed to take care of agriculture enterprise from the farm gate to the dining table.
With Adamawa state being mostly agrarian, this provincial governor attracted a whopping N100 billion from the Capital Market, to be invested in Agribusiness – the first in Nigeria, no less. For the first time the government is investing in Livestock development, a sector neglected by past administration in favour of crop production.
While I was looking forward to a campaign of issues, I am disappointed to see that our aspiring leaders are yet to articulate a position convincing enough to defeat the incumbent. Most of the things I read or hear are best confined to bedtime stories.
Someone went to town with a story that Fintiri humiliated Boni Haruna by preventing party officials in Michika from attending to the ex-governor when he went to register his intention to contest for the seat of the Senator representing Adamawa North. Michika local government? Boni’s hometown? I was scandalised to see that the story was attributed to a lawmaker, whose sole claim to fame was an altercation with a salesgirl in a sex-toy shop, three years back.
If such a character will be our moral barometer, then we are in more trouble than I thought. Three years is short period to forget such a heinous transgression.
This ‘provincial’ governor, in 2019 was able to produce a Manifesto after exhaustively touring the 226 electoral wards in the state and identifying key issues and problems. I thought we can hold up his promises and grade him according to what he delivered. It is pathetic if all we have to offer by way of “opposition” is the extent of our ‘connections and reach’.
In his ‘provincial’ way of doing things, the incumbent governor has linked up hitherto unreachable rural farming communities with major markets. There is also a plan to redevelop the markets, with particular emphasis on livestock markets that has already been identified through a baseline survey that was conducted.
The anticipated increase in the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) is enough to wean the state from the tits of the federal government.
If those now strutting our political landscape had used their ‘connections and exposure’, Fintiri wouldn’t be worried about how to raise the IGR to make enough money to address the infrastructural deficits he inherited. Sadly, while he is working towards improving our decayed or even non-existent infrastructure, they are talking about connections and exposure. In this age and time? Common, let’s be real!
The opposition is fixated with Fintiri and forgets about us the poor folks. They have failed to convince us on why we should jettison Fintiri and hitch our wagons to their political train. They are unwittingly campaigning for him by making sure that his name is permanently in the frame.
The bond between the governor and the poor, voting people of Adamawa is so strong that innuendos and insinuations dressed in the garb of patriotism may find it difficult to break.
Fintiri may be a political orphan – but his major fault in the court of our political elite is his refusal to be confined to the political orphanage operated by his traducers. He has constantly refused their puerile efforts to straitjacket him into the adoptive institution operated by our oligarchs.
This is his fault; and this is why the pack won’t forgive him. It is not about you or I; it is not about Adamawa; it is about a nebulous group where the lumpen don’t belong.
Let’s wake up!
Toungo writes from Kaduna
