Fintiri Is Lying More than all his predecessors put together, and He’s Doing It on Purpose

On Thursday, the The Finder published a remarkable story on its front page revealing a recent spike in the number of “false and misleading claims” made by Gov. Fintiri. In his first three months as Governor, Fintiri made 68 false claims, according to the Finder. In just the last six months, he has nearly doubled that total to 132. In June and July, he averaged sixteen false claims a day.

On July 5th, the Finder found what appears to be Fintiri’s most untruthful day yet: seventy-six per cent of the ninety-eight factual assertions he made in a campaign-style rally in Jimeta, were “false, misleading or unsupported by evidence.”

Fintiri’s rallies have become the signature events of his governance, and it is there that the Governor most often plays fast and loose with the facts, in service to his political priorities and to telling his fervent supporters what they want and expect to hear from him. At another rally in 2019, in Mubi, Fintiri made thirty-five false and misleading claims, on subjects ranging from running a youth based administration, free education, free healthcare and payment of scholarship.

These astonishing statistics were compiled by a small team overseen by The Finder Fact Checker column, who for much of the last decade has been truth-squadding politicians and doling out Pinocchios for their exaggerations, misrepresentations, distortions, and otherwise false claims.

The Governor, for example, has a habit of repeating the same falsehoods over and over again, especially as they concern his core political causes, such as free education or running worker’s welfare government   or paying scholarship. When Fintiri repeats a four-Pinocchio whopper? Since taking office, the Finder fact-checking team found, Fintiri has repeated close to a hundred untruths at least three times. Initially, the Finder planned to compile the database of Fintiri’s misrepresentations as part of a project for his first hundred days in office.

But the numbers kept piling up; now, Finder is committed to keeping it up for Fintiri’s full term, documenting every “untruth” (per Finder policy, he does not use the label “lies” even for the most egregious governorship whoppers).

The recent wave of misstatements is both a reflection of Fintiri’s increasingly unbound governace and a signal attribute of it. The upsurge provides empirical evidence that Fintiri, in recent months, has felt more confident running his government as he pleases, keeping his own counsel, and saying and doing what he wants when he wants to.

The fact that Fintiri, while historically unpopular with the Adamawa public as a whole, has retained the loyalty of more than eighty per cent of his party members, PDP—the group at which his lies seem to be aimed—means we are in for much more.

The falsehoods are as much a part of his political identity as his floppy black cap and the “Fresh Air” slogan.

 

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