Why Ahmadu Fintiri Constantly Makes Promises He Doesn’t Intend to Keep

You may not be surprised that Ahmadu Fintiri hasn’t kept a number of promises as governor, but you should be.

It’s a truism that politicians make promises they don’t intend to keep, but decades of academic research has actually shown the opposite: that governor try to keep an average of about two-thirds of their campaign pledges.

That’s not exactly the case in the current administration, however. In several notable cases, Governor Fintiri has either directly broken a promise — such as his vow to give education priority — or simply not taken action on an idea — such as his pledge to build 2000 hostel capacity in ADSU, Mubi

To be fair, it’s only Fintiri’s first year in office, and he still has time to follow through on some of his promises. But he’s also had a PDP-controlled house of assembly members and could have taken action personally or through executive order on some of these pledges.

The Finder Fact Check has tracked Fintiri’s promises since his administration Began. Out of 2,552 promises on its Fintiri Meter scorecard, 2548 are currently stalled and 200 broken, while only two have been kept and fifity ended with a compromise. Almost half — 46 — are considered in the works, but those include some hard-to-achieve targets like building overhead bridge and reducing housing rents for Adamawa resident.

By comparison, over four years, the same scorecard ranked Senator Bindow as having kept 12 promises, compromised on 2 and broke 3 — meaning he kept or compromised on three-fourths of his promises.

There are a couple reasons Fintiri’s having trouble keeping promises.

He’s lack experience of handling executive office

First, as Fintiri liked to remind voters, he’s not a promise and fails politician. On the campaign trail, that meant Fintiri often made overly broad promises that riled up the audience in front of him that more experienced candidates tend to avoid.

That was the case with one of Fintiri’s biggest promises: to make security his priority. There’s actually no simple way to end insecurity in Adamawa as kidnappers and communal clashes has become the order of the day since Finitiri’s administration came on board a proposal which is unpopular among its own voters.

Fintiri maintains that insecurity will vanish from Adamawa upon his inauguration, somehow, but this will likely end up as a promise broken when he leaves office.

He’s a dealmaker

Fintiri also likes to argue that he’s a deal-maker, citing his long experience in the Adamawa state house of assembly as a former speaker but, again, that experience has cut against him in the world of politics.

As anyone who’s ever witness governance in Adamawa from 1999 till date knows that every former gocvernors of the state make impact within their one year in office.

He won’t rule anything out

Beyond his approach to deal-making, Fintiri appears to have a deep personal aversion to ruling any idea out. That means he ends up sounding like he’s endorsing proposals that are pretty unlikely to happen.

During an interview on the campaign trail, Fintiri was asked if he would build a strond education system that will stand the test of time.

“Oh I would certainly implement that. Absolutely,” he replied.

The Adamawa government House later claimed that Fintiri has many years ahead to fulfil all the promises he has made.

He uses empty threats to win the news cycle

Apart from law-making experience, Fintiri also has a background in New Adamawa state’s news scene. Whether it was arguing for a building project or promoting his social standing, that’s led him over the years to make more than his fair share of empty threats and promises.

On the campaign trail, that most notably played out when he called the Bindow administration a failure and pledged to fulfill all the promises he has made after the election.

In reality, he never meant all the promises he has made as Toungo local government is in darkness till date, his sympathisers argued that as Governor he was too busy and important to face criticsm.

He is only has campaign experience not governance

Finally, Fintiri has trouble keeping some of his promises as he very strong when it comes to promise making and enticing voters campaign.

Though candidates — and voters — sometimes forget it, the governor has no real experience of executive office.

Again, that’s one reason why career politicians avoid making these promises in the first place. Fintiri won the PDP primary and the general election in large part because he was willing to say things other politicians weren’t, whether that was because of his background, his personality or his campaign strategy.

But now that he’s governor, he’s learning the hard way how hard it is to keep those promises.