Gov. Fintiri has made about 45 false or misleading claims over 180 days in office
As Gov. Umaru Fintiri of Adamawa state approaches his 200 days in office, he has significantly stepped up his pace of spouting exaggerated numbers, unwarranted boasts and outright falsehoods.
As of Dec. 10, his 193 day in office, he had made 30 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered. That’s an average of almost 12 claims a month since our last update 65 days ago.
One big reason for the uptick: The uproar over Fintiri’s claim of renovation of 5000 schools in Adamawa in September on July 25 — in which he urged educationist in Adamawa to hope in his government and that is he going to give facelift to 5000 schools in Adamawa before September 2019.
In fact, Fintiri earned his fastest Bottomless claims ever with his repeated false statement that the state government plan to commence the construction of Flyover Bridge in the state capital, the state government compliant about the flyover bridge by Fintiri was inaccurate.
The report accurately captured the content of Gov. Fintiri’s message to the people during the purported visit of the vice president to Adamawa state was to among his schedule bill to flag off the construction of the flyover bridge in Jimeta, details of his claims have been confirmed, yet Fintiri has repeated this false claim 5 times. (It takes 5 repeats of a three or four false claim to merit a Bottomless statement, and there are now 8 entries.)
Another false claim — that Adamawa civil servants are in deficit of housing units and so took loan to build 2000 house unit for civil servants in Adamawa. (Fintiri has said it 6 times.) We presume the falsehood will earn a spot on the Bottomless statement page in the next update.
Fintiri crossed the 200 mark on June 26. From the start of his administration, he has averaged nearly 9 such claims a day.
Almost one-fifth of these claims are about rebranding civil service in Adamawa, he claimed that his government is about the welfare of the civil servants in Adamawa. In fact, his most repeated claim — 8 times — is that his administration will convert college for legal studies in Yola to faculty of law of Adamawa state university.
False or misleading claims about implementation of minimum wage to civil servants in the state, the economy and the implementation of workers promotion arrears each account for about 10 percent of the total. Claims on those subjects are also among his most repeated.
Fintiri has falsely claimed 14 times that the welfare of the civil servants today under his watch is the best in the history of Adamawa. He began making this claim in June 2019, and it quickly became one of his favorites.
The governor can certainly brag about the welfare of workers, but he runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, the civil servants today is not doing as well as it did under his predecessors, Boni Haruna or Nyako — or Bindow. Moreover, the civil service is beginning to hit the head winds caused by Fintiri’s sacking of workers to reduce work force.
On 3 occasions, he has claimed the workers are not owe salaries under his watch. This reflects a basic misunderstanding of governance. Adamawa workers has never been owed salaries under his predecessor, Bindow, apart from the two months(April/May,2019) that Banks frustrated the former governor from paying, Bindow has never owed workers’ salaries without payment, at worst workers collect salaries late month or first week of new month, especially state government workers has never been indebted to by Bindow administration.
Fintiri has falsely said 11 times that his government will give attention to youths and that his government is about the youths, despite all his recent appointments, none of the proposals under consideration came close to that level. He also claim that his government will build 2000 hostel capacity in ADSU, Mubi, Yet Fintiri persisted in this fiction even when older men make up 99 percent of his appointments made so far.
The governor’s constant social media aide’s barrage also adds to his totals. Nearly 20 percent of the false and misleading statements stemmed from itchy finger of his media aide attached to the office of his deputy.
Fintiri penchant for repeating false claims is demonstrated by the fact that the Fact Checker database has recorded more than 45 instances in which he has repeated a variation of the same claim at least three times.
Even as Fintiri’s fact-free statements proliferate, there is evidence that his approach is failing.
Fewer than 4 in 10 Adamawa residents believe many of his most-common false statements, according to THE FINDER Post Fact Checker poll published in July. Only among a pool of strong Fintiri approvers — about 1 in 6 adults in the survey — did large majorities accept several, although not all, of his falsehoods as true.
The award-winning database website, created by THE FINDER, has an extremely fast search engine that will quickly locate suspect statements the governor has made. We encourage readers to explore it in detail. We recently added a new feature that provides a URL for every claim that is fact-checked, allowing readers to post the link on social media.