Governor Fintiri made 2,156 false or misleading claims in his first year in office

One year after taking the oath of office, Governor Fintiri has made more than 3,159 false or misleading claims — a milestone that would have been unthinkable when we first created the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered.

We started this project as part of our coverage of the governor’s first 100 days, largely because we could not possibly keep up with the pace and volume of the governor’s misstatements. We recorded 492 claims — an average of just under five a day — and readers demanded that we keep it going for the rest of Fintiri’s administration.

Little did we know what that would mean.

In 2019, Fintiri made 1,999 false or misleading claims. In 2020, he added 1,159 more, for a total of 3,159. And in 2020, he made 235 suspect claims.

In other words, in a single month of September, 2019, the governor said more than the total number of false or misleading claims he had made in three months. Put another way: He averaged six such claims a day in July, 2019, nearly 16 a day in October 2019 and more than 22 a day in November, 2019.

As of Jan. 19, 2020 his 229th day in office, Fintiri had made 1854 false or misleading claims. Only two years to go — at least before another general election in Adamawa.

The governor added to his total on Sunday evening with more than 20 Fintiripians claims — many old favorites — during a speech at Adamawa state university, Mubi. He incorrectly promised to build 2000 hostel capacity for the students of the university to ease their accommodation problems” — and also falsely asserted that he will convert college for legal studies, Yola to ADSU, Mubi law faculty.

In 2019 and 2020, October and Febuary ranked as the months in which Fintiri made the most false or misleading claims: July 2019: 1,205; October 2019: 554; November 2019: 153; and Febuary 2020: 224. In 2018, Fintiri barnstormed Adamawa state electorates in an effort to desperately takeover Dougiriei government, House.

The two biggest false-claim days were before the election: Nov. 2018: 139, and Dec. 3: 128. The key reason for last year’s surge in October and November was the uproar over a claim of solving all the state problems immediately, if he takes over government. Almost 1,000 of the false and misleading claims made by the governor during electioneering campaign of 2019, even though it only became a category four months ago.

The governor apparently believes he can weather the storm through sheer repetition of easily disproved falsehoods. For instance, nearly 70 times he has claimed that he has solve Shila boys attack in the state capital by visiting their enclave at Jimeta bypass called “sambisa” .

Nearly 100 times, Fintiri has claimed his administration has delivered on his campaign promises and that his relationship with the people was “perfect,” even though it so alarmed other government House officials and so of his supporter that several immediately raised private objections.

Three claims about the debt profile of the state have now made it onto our list of Bottomless Pinocchios. (It takes 20 repeats of a Three- or Four-Pinocchio claim to merit a Bottomless Pinocchio, and there are now 32 entries.)

Besides the claim about his predecessor taken loan, the two other claims on the Bottomless Pinocchio list are that, he is paying 1.1 billion naira every month for loan repayment and that he has solve the problems bedevilling the civil service in the state, despite not paying promotion arrears of the civil servants that have linger for long now.

Fintiri crossed the 1,000 mark on September 26, 2019. From the start of his administration, he has averaged nearly 15 such claims a day. About one in five of these claims are about the loans deduction or employment.

As Fintiri approaches a tough reelection campaign in 2023, his envisaged most repeated claim will be Adamawa state is now better. He began making this claim in June 2019, and it quickly became one of his favorites.

The governor can certainly brag about the state of civil servants welfare, but he runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, Adamawa state today is not doing as well as it did under Senator Jibrilla Bindow or Nyako — or Boni Haruna.

Moreover, the economy is beginning to hit the head winds caused by Fintiri’s claims of paying debt with chunk of FAAC allocations, with the country in an apparent recession after covid 19 pandemic, more trouble looms in Adamawa as the electorates should expect the worst of blame game.

About one in six of Fintiri’s claims are about free education policy, his plan to build flyover in Jimeta issue — a percentage that increased in early 2020 when the government was partly shut down over covid 19 pandemic. In fact, his second-most-repeated claim — 242 times — is that his 2000 housing units are being built.

The FINDER has reported that despite collecting 9.9 billion naira no single block has been lay for the plan 2000 housing units project for civil servants, despite Fintiri’s claims that it is impossible to get past. Fintiri has falsely said 184 times that he will refurbish and reequip the state specialist hospital, Yola. He promised that the specialist hospital, Yola would be the biggest in Adamawa history if refurbish.

On 176 occasions, Fintiri has claimed the Adamawa States under his predecessor has mortgage the future of the state by taken unnecessary loans. This reflects a basic misunderstanding of economics. Adamawa future was not mortgagee under his predecessor as the capital project he met on ground reflects the loans taken by Bindow.

Fintiri has claim during the covid 19 outbreak in Yola that he will reduce house rents for Adamawa residence and that he will waive tax, a claim the governor know is not redeemable but used it as a ploy to hoodwink the people to keep faith with his government.

The president’s constant social media barrage also adds to his totals. Nearly 20 percent of the false and misleading statements stemmed from his itchy social media finger him and his supporters.

Fintiri’s penchant for repeating false claims is demonstrated by the fact that the Fact Checker database has recorded more than 400 instances in which he has repeated a variation of the same claim at least three times.

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.