Pilgrimage: Fintiri’s Fidelity to Adamawa’s Growth Three Years On.

Daily Rendezvous

 COVID-19 and financial puacity facing Nigeria and Adamawa state has not deterred Governor Ahmadu Fintiri from airlifting more a thousand pilgrims of both religions from Adamawa state to the holy lands to perform this year's  Hajj and Christian Pilgrimage to Rome to perform the yearly rituals of visiting the holylands.

A period most Governors are grappling with salary payments, Fintiri took the bull by the horn to sponsor thousands to the holy lands. He pioneered  the airlifting of pilgrims to the holy land  since the advent of COVID-19 in Nigeria.

 He sponsored 119 Christians to Rome for the sole purpose of pilgrimage the only Governor to do so throughout the country. The contingent cut across different denominations. Including the Pentecostal  and orthodox.

The contingent headed by the Catholic Bishop of yola Diocese Bishop Stephen Dami Mamza, includes the President of EYN Rev Joel Billi the vice Chairman Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria Bishop Peter Barthimawus.

Others are the first Class Traditional Rulers of Lunguda Dishon Kurhaye, Mbula Altam Biyapo and a host of laymen and church members.

The Pope Blessed the contingent and prayed for the  Governor and the Good People of Adamawa State. The unity within the body of Christ as demonstrated throughout the visit, was also commended.

Many State in the Country have battled to stay afloat in the last three years. 

There are few exceptions though. Adamawa is one such state.  Governor Umaru Fintiri, still displays as much enthusiasm for governance as he did three years ago, fueled by the conviction that the people’s wellbeing is the reason for the existence of Government.

So, even amidst the flurry of politics and jockeying over continuity in 2023, there is still an unrelenting investment in sectors that enhance the people’s living condition. Just as it was in the early years of the Fintiri administration, there is a continuing upgrade of primary health care, sustained investment in schools rehabilitation and narrowing the student-teacher ratio.

These interventions are a huge leap from the tokenism of previous years that unabashedly gave some facelift to the facade of hospitals and schools without a corresponding attention to staffing and equipment.

 The success of state policies can often be gauged from the outcome their implementation yield. With regard to Fintiri’s investment in the key sectors, there are many social indicators that prove how impactful they have been.

Yet, it is indicative of the progress the state would have attained in maternal and child care had previous administrations’ attention been just as robust. Impressive development scorecard of the Fintiri administration is in spite of the massive decline in revenue accruing to states from the federation account.

 Indeed, it is important to note that declining revenue has been a recurrent feature of the last seven years, a problem the Adamawa State governor alluded to in his inaugural speech. Nigeria was, in fact, on the cusp of a recession at the time the inauguration (May 29, 2019) was held.

A political associate recently told me that this is not the best time to be governor of Adamawa State, but I replied that this is indeed the best time to be governor of Adamawa. Importantly, I believe in the miracle of five loaves and two fish, I believe that God will give us the wisdom and courage to successfully navigate the state through the current economic crisis,”.

Governor Fintiri optimism was still however tempered with some pragmatism, as he would later add: “We must match our faith with the right decisions and good work”.

The significance of the Fintiri administration’s achievements gets an added sheen by the fact that Adamawa State receives one of the least sum of the monthly federal allocation, which, ab initio, puts it at a disadvantage.

So, every progress recorded in the state has been through a deft deployment of resources and sustained dismantling of factors that impede the growth of business. This has enabled businesses to flourish and helped the state to shore-up its internal revenue.

As the Adamawa State governor has demonstrated, “matching faith with the right decisions and good work” means deploying funds optimally to benefit the entire populace.

It means as well jettisoning the decadent practice of old where recurrent expenditure takes a disproportionately large share of budgets at the expense of capital expenditure.

This budgeting philosophy is the reason Adamawa State has substantially revamped its infrastructure in the last three years, even at the height of Covid-19 when many states scaled down their capital budgets due to the associated economic constraints of the pandemic.

Equally, significant is the administration’s scrupulous budget award process. The impact is that every contract award for a capital project is sufficiently cash-backed, eliminating the risk of abandoned project.

With the governor having barely one year left as we draw close to his first term of four years, his performance already puts an immense weight of expectations on his would-be successor’s shoulders in 2027. The people would expect no less.