WHO NEEDS A HUG? By Edgar Amos Sunday

For some personal reasons, I had been reluctant to join issues with Dr. Umar Ardo over his article titled ‘’When praise becomes propaganda: A Refutal of ‘The Fintiri Aura’. However, the shallowness of the article and how a few people seem to be swayed by it, compels me to clarify some things and offer an advise to Dr. Ardo. 

 I wrote ‘’The Fintiri Aura’’ in which I drew attention to the visionary leadership qualities of Rt. Hon. Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri, the Governor of Adamawa State and highlighted, among others, his courage and deep faith in God. This is my personal opinion. I and everyone is entitled to choose his or her heroes and heroines. Even the global leadership icons that I listed such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jnr, Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela and so on, may not be viewed as heroes by others. I know that some would rather list Malcolm X, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and the like as their heroes. 

Dr. Ardo too has the right to choose his heroes. 

Dr. Ardo deprecates my article as lacking in credibility and objectivity because I am the Chief of Staff and an aide to Governor Fintiri. If my article is not objective on that score, how will his article be adjudged to be objective given his incessant vitriolic attacks on the Governor against who he had serially contested elections at the polls and the courts and lost? It is instructive that Dr. Ardo could not find a single policy, programme or project to commend in a Governor that has been in power for six years. So much for objectivity! 

Instructively, President Muhammadu Buhari and President Bola Tinubu both gave Governor Fintiri awards for Good governance back to back despite being in different political parties and in opposition to each other. Is Buhari also an aide of Fintiri? Or is Tinubu his Chief of Staff? Or are both of them propelled by sycophancy? 

Besides, I have heard several elder statesmen, Women and Youths from Adamawa State, some of who have nothing to do with the government, publicly showering encomiums on Fintiri for his administration’s developmental strides especially in physical infrastructure. 

Dr. Ardo makes a meal of a purported Court case against Fintiri. It is needless to remind him of the trite aphorism in Nigeria’s legal system which asserts that a person is innocent until he is proven otherwise by a court of competent jurisdiction.  

Dr. Ardo argues that my write-up is devoid of data. I wrote about the Governor’s qualitative attributes such as courage and faith in God, and gave lucid examples. That should suffice. If and when I write about measurable issues that can be rendered in quantitative terms, then it is valid to provide relevant data, not for those blinded by prejudice and hubris, but for objective analysts. 

One piece of statistical data that might be of interest to Dr. Ardo is the 6,870 votes (0.3%) he scored out of a total registered voters of 2,196,566 in the 2023 governorship elections. 

Repeatedly contesting to be governor of Adamawa State like Dr. Ardo has done and consistently being rejected by the electorate in such a humiliating way might make someone bitter, frustrated and demoralized. For such people, one of their greatest needs is a hug.