By Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
There is a story among the Fulani elders that when the hyena plots in the dark, it still trembles at the roar of the lion. Adamawa has now produced its own hyena. He wears a governor’s cap, eats from a governor’s plate, and sleeps in a Government House he could never have reached without the lion he now hunts. His name is Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri.
Let us not mince words. Fintiri betrayed. And history will not record it as a defection. It will record it as a desertion.
He did not slip away in the night like an ordinary traitor. He staged it. In February 2026, he rounded up his commissioners, his Assembly members and even his party chairman, herded them like sheep into the APC pen, and called it leadership. By April, he stood at the APC congress in Yola, chest puffed, voice raised, promising to deliver Adamawa to Tinubu and christening his treachery an “onslaught.” By August, his deputy was in Yola cutting the ribbon on Tinubu’s presidential campaign, singing praises to the very policies that have turned Nigerian kitchens into mortuaries of hope.
But the tape does not lie. Fintiri’s tongue has a long memory, even if his conscience has none. So let us press play.
In November 2020, when Atiku turned 74, Fintiri’s own household, through the office of the Adamawa First Lady, published his tribute hailing Atiku as “the greatest” and celebrating the tough political style that made him the strongman of Nigerian politics.
In October 2021, before the whole nation on live television, Fintiri bowed his head and said of Atiku: “He is my father; he is a leader to everybody in PDP. He is our last presidential candidate and if given the opportunity again, I will support him.” In the same breath, he swore that Atiku had the intelligence to win the presidency and had all it takes to rule Nigeria.
In April 2022, in Yola, he prophesied like a man at the altar: “I think he will be there, In-shaa Allah. It is a matter of time and one step.” He boasted that politics is local and that he had locked down the home base for “our leader.” He declared that Atiku had the experience to close the gaps tearing Nigeria apart.
When the Wike storm battered the party that year, it was Fintiri who begged to chair Atiku’s reconciliation team, grinning that he was “an embodiment of both men.”
And to this very day, on the official website of the Adamawa State Government, his own words still hang like an indictment: “Happy birthday to our distinguished elder statesman, Waziri Adamawa… Your contributions to our nation and our dear Adamawa State remain a source of pride.”
Father. Leader. The greatest. Waziri. A source of pride. One step from Aso Rock.
Every one of those words came out of Fintiri’s own mouth. Every one of them is now a witness against him.
Today, that same mouth says the presidency should remain in the South. Read that again. A Northern governor, from Atiku’s own Adamawa, standing on a podium to campaign against the son of his own soil, the man he once called father on national television. In Yoruba land we have a word for a child who slaps the father who fed him. We do not call him ambitious. We call him an abomination.
If ingratitude ever needed a portrait, Adamawa has finally commissioned one. It is Fintiri, framed in APC green, hung on Tinubu’s wall.
Let the ledger speak. Atiku nurtured this man with the milk of trust. He protected him with his own political spine. He resourced him to the tune of over ₦2 billion to become governor in his first tenure. When the APC machinery came roaring for him in his second term, Atiku stood in front of him like a human shield, even when the APC candidate was an unapologetic Atiku loyalist. Atiku spent loyalty he did not owe. Fintiri pocketed it, and then sold the receipt to Tinubu.
That is the whole difference between a statesman and a tenant of power. A statesman builds the house. A tenant sells the furniture and hands the keys to the landlord’s enemy.
Now look at the two households. When Fintiri crossed to the APC, Atiku’s son, Adamu Atiku Abubakar, resigned from his cabinet the very next week. No insults. No drama. No press war. He thanked the governor, thanked the people, and walked out with his head high and his honour intact. That is breeding. That is home training. That is what a principled father produces. And what did Fintiri produce? A defection, a pledge to Tinubu, and a political autobiography whose only chapter is titled “Ingratitude.”
We now understand what the June 2025 circular from the Adamawa Department of Chieftaincy Affairs truly was. They dressed it in the robes of administrative reform, a simple rule on which districts could produce kingmakers and council members of the Adamawa Emirate. How convenient that the only casualty worth celebrating was the Waziri, the same Waziri Fintiri once saluted on his own government’s website. The APC propagandists danced as if they had found a dagger. Months later, Fintiri marched into the APC. The circular was the knife. The defection was the confession. The man sharpened the blade in June 2025 and showed his face in February 2026.
And right on cue, the Presidency’s chief cheerleader, Bayo Onanuga, climbed onto the stage Fintiri built and told Atiku to retire to Dubai. Imagine the audacity. A government that has made a bag of rice a luxury, the naira a joke and insecurity a daily obituary column is advising the most experienced reformer in the race to go and rest. The APC does not want Atiku in Dubai. It wants him off the ballot, because it has seen the numbers in its own nightmares.
But hear me clearly. Ten thousand Fintiris cannot undo what Atiku Abubakar represents. A thousand circulars cannot erase a lifetime. As Marcus Aurelius wrote, “What stands in the way becomes the way.” Atiku is not slowed by betrayal. He is sharpened by it. “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds,” says the Mexican proverb. Fintiri thought he was digging a grave. He was only tilling the soil.
A man can be stripped of a seat on an emirate council. He cannot be stripped of a nation’s embrace. Atiku’s titles span every corner of this republic:
Waziri of Adamawa
Giwa Adamawa
Sardaunan Ganye
Zanna Adamawa
Turakin Sokoto
Rare Adimula of Yoruba Land
Rare of Ire-Ekiti (and what a blessing that I share that hallowed title with this iconic personality as Rare Atayese of Odo Oro Ekiti)
Enyi Ndigbo of Nigeria
Onyisi Abia
Ochiagha Ndigbo
Ebubedike of Oru East
Omekannaya of Anambra
Dike Di Ora Nma of Enugu
Dan Amanar Talakawa of the North
Kwararren Jagaban of the Middle Belt
Baban Gwamna of Niger
Ezedioramma of Owerri
Asiwaju of the Delta
From Sokoto to Aba, from Ire-Ekiti to Onitsha, the royal cloth of recognition has wrapped him, because Nigeria knows her own. Fintiri can redraw a district map. He cannot redraw the map of a people’s affection. He can remove a name from a council list. He cannot remove it from history.
And what will history say of Fintiri? Nothing beyond a footnote. A governor who was handed a crown by a giant and spent it buying a chair in the giant’s enemy camp.
Atiku is not only titled. He is tested, tried and triumphant. He turned personal wealth into public good. He did not just build schools. He built the American University of Nigeria and gave it to the community. He funds scholarships for indigent students across the country, has built hospitals, sponsored free health outreaches, empowered women, equipped farmers and backed small businesses. He feeds families. He raises dreams. He renews lives. Ask the APC to show you its equivalent, and it will show you a defection ceremony with free jollof.
That is the APC’s only surviving industry: importing governors because it cannot export results. A party that has weaponised the price of food against the poor, humiliated the naira and normalised funerals, now survives by harvesting the ambitions of men like Fintiri. It cannot win hearts, so it buys hands. It cannot win arguments, so it collects defectors. It is no longer a political party. It is a pawn shop, and Fintiri is the latest item on the shelf.
Not long ago, I sat with a ruling party senator from Ondo State, a man swimming in APC waters but drowning in his conscience. In an unguarded moment, he said:
“Don’t mind the noise makers on social media. The most feared person by Tinubu’s government ahead of 2027 is Atiku. We all discuss him in Abuja with trepidation. If we fail to prepare, he and his coalition group will defeat us.”
He never repeated that statement in my presence again. He knew. He knew that I was Atiku, not just in spirit, but in conviction, in loyalty, in action and in destiny.
So let it be thundered from every rooftop. I fear nothing. I fear no one. As Mandela taught, “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” Gandhi warned that first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. The APC has stopped laughing. It is now fighting with borrowed governors and recycled insults. When your enemy starts recruiting your own children against you, it means he has run out of soldiers of his own.
The coalition is no longer a rumour. The African Democratic Congress is the platform. Atiku Abubakar is its candidate. And on January 16, 2027, Nigerians will have their chance to evict hunger from their kitchens and Tinubu from Aso Rock. Fintiri may shout in Yola. The people of Adamawa will answer at the polling unit, and they will remember exactly who called Atiku “father” and who sold him for a ticket.
To the mischief makers who believe stripping the Waziri title will erase his legacy, go and learn from the sands of time. Mandela needed no chieftaincy. Gandhi held no throne. Awolowo carried no sceptre. What they had was conviction. What Atiku has is a people who believe in him, a record that testifies for him, and a future that calls his name. As Cicero said, “The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.” Atiku walks with the humility of greatness. Fintiri crawls with the guilt of a son who knows exactly what he did to his father.
Let the enemies gather. Let them conspire. Let them defect. They shall stumble, they shall scatter, they shall fall.
And for our leader, Atiku Abubakar, I leave us with Psalm 91:
“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.”
May the Almighty guard him with angelic legions, guide him with prophetic clarity, and lift him beyond betrayal, above bitterness, into the fullness of destiny.
This is not the end. This is the rise.
Let’s correct the mischiefs.
Rare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
