Gov.Fintiri’s full Speech at the Swearing-in Ceremony and Declaration to Run for Second Time

Gov.Fintiri’s full Speech at the Swearing-in Ceremony and Declaration to Run for Second Time

His Excellency, Rt.Hon. Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri’s Speech,at the Occasion of the swearing-in Ceremony of the 21 Elected Local Government Councils of Adamawa State and his Formal Acceptance to Run for the office of the Governor of Adamawa state for the Second time Under the PDP.Monday, 11th – April, 2022.

Let me start by congratulating our newly elected local Government Council Chairmen and 226 Councilors across the State for their victories at the Saturday 9th, polls. It is indeed a victory well-deserved. We all worked for it and share in the joy and pride it brings not only to our great party – the PDP, but to our State and our people who have once again experienced the beauty of democracy at the grassroots level through the exercise of their right of franchise. I thank the good people of Adamawa State for continuously believing in us and voting the PDP overwhelmingly. I assure you that we shall not fail you. If we have not failed you at the State level, we sure won’t fail you at the Council level. The peaceful conduct of the election has once again, demonstrated our collective resolve to embrace democracy and its tenets.   
This  election has produced triple outcomes: First, it is a referendum on the failures of the APC policies and how agitated our people are to vote out the party from the bottom to the top; secondly, as an administration, it has  bestowed on us an opportunity for self-evaluation and strengthened our believes that we are doing something right in Adamawa State and the generality of the citizens, within and outside are happy with us; and thirdly, it has reaffirmed my often-echoed position that “there is no opposition in Adamawa State”.  For if there were any, we would have seen them and their performance in the Saturday polls.  A true demonstration of political capacity in every democracy is in electoral strength not empty distant propaganda that is loaded with uncultured venom devoid of sagacity.  

I want to equally acknowledge the Adamawa State Independent Electoral Commission (ADSIEC) for midwifing a credible election across the 21 Local Government Councils of the State. Once again, we have demonstrated our commitment to an entrenched democratic culture which is rooted in the sanctity of election especially at the grassroot level. Back to back we have provided the needed atmosphere and resources to conduct hitch-free elections into our Local Government Councils twice in less than three years of our existence as a government. This is a feat our predecessors made so huge an impossible task. 
To the newly sworn-in council Chairmen, I want to caution that “to whom much is given, much is expected”. You must continue on the path of service to our people. This is the tradition of the PDP in Adamawa State.

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This is the tradition responsible for your individual and collective victory at the polls. This victory remains a work in progress. You can bring it to full circle when trust is attained. You must continue to win by discharging your duties responsibly. You must be at your duty post whenever your people desire you. This isn’t a part-time job. As leaders of the closest tier of government to the people, your doors must be wide open and your people must have access to you as much as possible at all times. 

You are coming at the most heated time in the polity. The drums of 2023 elections have started beating. We cannot close our ears to the sound it is building daily. While calling on you to remain focused on the lane of your duties, I want to remain you that what you do with your mandates at your various councils have direct bearing on how our party will fare in the 2023 elections. You must therefore take up the dual task of being the political leaders of your Councils and leaders of the Party in your respective Local Governments and the Wards, with deserving seriousness.

As respective leaders of our people and our party, we are a true reflection of the promises of our party. It is when the people trust us that they can believe in our party and continue to vote for it. You must not concede any inch for unwarranted failure. Governance and elections are intertwined.  At all times, elections must be won, before governments are run. Likewise, governments must be run responsibly before elections can be won.

Less than two months away from today, the PDP-led administration will be three years old in Adamawa State. On assumption of duty, we strategically resolved to remain true to the dictates of the lines of our oath. We chose to serve every citizen of Adamawa State without discrimination. Our allegiance and duty have remained faithfully to the State with every breath of patriotism. At the inception, we were able to pull the State out of election mood and placed her on the pedestal of good governance. The decision to reduce politics and concentrate on governance at that stage was a deliberate one. It was taken after deep understanding of the dynamics of politics and governance in the State.

Adamawa State, has been robbed of its chance to grow over the years because the state has been caught in the web of political mudslinging that was elevated to a norm. We have over the years wasted so much energy on politicking than on governance. The merchants of this energy sapping enterprise are everywhere – among our bitter losing opposition politicians, in our churches and mosques, in our tribes and even in our own political party and other identity settings.

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Fortunately for us, even though they are good at making the loudest noise, they are in the minority. As an administration, we have consistently ignored their needless noise and refused to be distracted.  We ignored hollow attacks and remained focused on the delivery of good governance. We have resisted any attempt to be hijacked by a clique of political-jobbers. We have chosen to be on the side of the people.  It is these deliberate but strategic choices that our traducers are mistaking for weakness.

For us as an administration, every event has a season. There is a season for politics and another one for governance. Thus, if for any reasons, citizens begin to see changes in our actions and language moving forward, it is because, we are perhaps, responding to the dictates of a re-emerging season.

Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, the result of this guarded and guided “governance season” has paid up handsomely, as it has freed the State from the suffocating demands of desperate politicians who hitherto, exert so much pressures on the lean resources of the State to the detriment of the development of our people. Today, we are achieving every item on our 11-Point Agenda with the required speed and precision. We made the security of lives and properties a top priority.

This is being attained, fairly, with the support of all the stakeholders in our ingenious security architecture. We have surmounted the perennial Famer/herder conflicts in the State. Our people can now farm and herd livestock enjoying the lush of our own side of the Benue valley with minimal fear, it wasn’t like this Four years ago. We have subdued the urban miscreants popularly known as the “Shila Boys”, etc.; the education sector is enjoying a huge boost.

I bring to you, glad tidings from our indigent students studying abroad on the States scholarship; and those studying in our tertiary institutions within the country. Our school system is being improved upon both in the quality of infrastructure and teaching. Today, we have raised enrollment rate in public schools by expanding access and making it free. We have taken the economic burden of examination fees off the shoulders of parents and guardians as we have been paying WAEC and NECO fees for all final year students in public schools since we came on board. We reintroduced the school feeding system with balanced diet in our boarding schools.

We are fixing both the demand and the supply sides of the healthcare challenges in the State. We have committed the State fully into the Health Insurance Scheme by paying the required Counterpart Fund that enabled the State benefit from the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF). As I speak to you, over 29,043 Less privileged people, namely: People living with Disability, Pregnant Women, Children Below Five Years, Internally Displaced Persons and Indigents have been enrolled to access Health Services without paying at the point of accessing Health Care Services across all the 226 wards of the State. I call on our people to enroll massively into the scheme.

This is a sure way of ensuring all residents have access to needed promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative health services with sufficient quality and equitable delivery without being subjected to financial hardship. On the supply side, we have renovated and expanded facilities in the General hospitals located in Ganye, Numan, Mubi and Fufore. Works have reached advanced stage in the four brand new Cottage hospitals we are constructing in Gombi, Girei, Shelleng and Lamurdde.

We have concluded plans to build more Cottage hospitals in Demsa and Mayo-Belwa and would ensure completion of the one at Dumne which was abandoned for over three decades. To improve on the overall health care services in the State. We have recruited Doctors, Nurses, Medical Laboratory Scientist and Primary health Care Workers to provide quality health services across the health facilities. We have provided a modern Infectious Diseases Center (IDC) to manage and contain epidemics generally.

This has been put to use in the containment of COVID -19 Pandemic. We have renovated and built new Primary Healthcare Centers across the State.  We are building the biggest Molecular Laboratory and Diagnostic Centre in northern Nigeria.  It is our fervent belief that we can’t achieve fair inclusion without addressing the fundamental question of access to healthcare. We are prosecuting an aggressive urban and rural renewal campaign with vigour.

Providing both urban and rural infrastructure in quantum and quality that is unprecedented in the history of the State. Distinguished Guests Ladies and Gentlemen, this might not be an ideal avenue for governance stock-taking, but it is definitely our modest way of bringing to your notice what we would have lost had we cheaply succumbed to the antics and diatribes of political jobbers in the early days of this administration. 

As we inch into the “political season”, I want to reassure you that a triumph over an empty-lily-livered opposition is an art we have mastered with ease in Adamawa State. With the support of the good people of Adamawa State and the might of Almighty God, we have beaten them before, and we will beat them again. We are not going into the 2023 campaigns with empty promises. By now the last three years is enough testimony that our words have always been our bond.

It is what the electorates of Adamawa State can take to the bank. For those who feel that the best way to grow in politics is to cook mischief, spread slander and hide under primordial and clannish canopy to whip sentiments, perhaps it is time to change tactics. This one has expired. We have been through this route before and we are wiser now. I want to assure you that Adamawa State has grown pass that point. You either repent or get consumed. We were voted by the majority of Adamawa people to work for Adamawa State.

This, we shall dutifully continue to do. At each point, we are guided by the injunctions of such responsibilities without any fear or favour. Parochial and chauvinistic sentiments are tools best reserved for lazy politicians, and I am not one. For me, as far as governance is concerned, the entire Adamawa State is my constituency, my tribe and my religion. This is the sacred interpretation of my oath of office, and I am eternally engrossed in living by it.   

For us in Adamawa State, 2023 is not a question of what we will do? It is a matter of what we have done with the mandate freely given in 2019. In the last three years, we have provided the right answers to all the questions and can be trusted to seek for a new mandate for yet another electoral cycle.

Mr. Chairman, Party Leaders, Distinguished Guests Ladies and Gentlemen, it is no longer news that the Nomination Form for Adamawa Gubernatorial race of our party has been picked for me.  Because we have done so much and there is more to be done to better the lot of our people and our dear State; because we have built a trusting relationship with the electorates, majority of whom are the masses where our support (both in votes and prayers) is derived; because our party needs to continue on the path of victory; after a very wide consultation within our great Party and outside it; within the State and outside it; with my family, friends, associates and leaders, I wish to formally inform you that I have accepted to offer myself yet again, to seek for the endorsement of our Great Party, the PDP, to carry its flag in the 2023 Governorship race of Adamawa State.

I believe you can trust me again as you have done before. There is indeed nothing about me that either you or the entire citizens of Adamawa State do not know. And there is nothing on the shelf of your developmental needs that I do not know. I have started the crusade for reinventing a new Adamawa where no one is left behind and nothing is left untouched. We have done so much in physical infrastructure and moving forward, Stomach infrastructure will take precedence.  I seek for your support to continue the good work we have started in the State. 

Now more than ever before, we need to strengthen our unity of purpose in the Party. We must collectively agree to destroy any force of discord and resist agents of destruction in our folds.  The PDP is a party founded on the principles of service, loyalty and discipline. It is on this note that I call on all aspirants contesting for all offices on the platform of the party to uphold these cardinal principles as sacred. Descent within the party is natural. In fact, that is why we are called the largest democratic party in Africa. Under no circumstances should such descent be allowed to jeopardies the collective interest of the party. Any moment from now, we will be conducting our primary elections. I admonish that we go into the primaries with the right democratic ethos. Elections are meant to be won and lost.

Each of us should take whatever the outcome throws at us with sportsmanly faith and work for the party. There is enough space in the party for everyone if only we resolve to work together in unison.      The PDP remains the most formidable party in Nigeria. It is the only party that has remained not only consistent with its nomenclature but with its vision for a united and prosperous Nigeria.

Like in Adamawa State, at the national level, now more than ever before, the mood of the nation is clear – Nigerians have realized their mistakes and are ready to correct them with the 2023 election. The APC- led Government has failed at all levels and the only way to ensure that the failure is not elevated to a norm is to vote the APC out and Vote the PDP in. For the PDP, it is time to Rescue Nigeria. Nigerians will not forgive us, if we refuse to prosecute this rescue mission with all the arsenals at our disposal.

It is on this note that I warmly welcome my brother and friend, Dr. Aliyu Idi Hong – a former Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and all those who decamped with him to our fold. Our doors are open at all time for those who will join us to push the inept APC out of power from the ward to the national level. 
The PDP is loaded with Presidential hopefuls – all of them qualified to rule Nigeria.

All of them my good friends and brothers. But I am a practical politician who is realistic about possibilities. What the PDP needs at the moment is to win elections for Nigerians. If we must win, we need to field a candidate whose candidature won’t be hard to sell in every nook of the Country. That candidate is Atiku Abubakar.

Coincidentally, the Waziri is our own special gift to Nigeria. I lead in this pride and call on all the citizens of Adamawa State at home and away to support the aspiration of Atiku Abubakar for President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I am fully committed to this and Adamawa State is equally committed to this noble course and sacrifice to nation building. We must go all out to mobilize our friends and associates outside the State for this rescue mission. This isn’t Waziri’s project, it is an Adamawa project; it is a Rescue Nigeria Project.  

Once again, I congratulate the Council Chairmen and Ward Councilors as you take the oath of office. Go there and make us all proud. 

God Bless PDP,

God Bless Adamawa State

God Bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria. 

Thank you all.