The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been slammed by a member of the Northern Elders Forum, NEF, Prof Usman Yusuf.
He scourged Tinubu over his Renewed Hope Agenda, saying it has turned to hopelessness.
Yusuf, a former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, made this statement in an interview with Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.
He said rather than inject the Nigerian people with some hope capsules, the Tinubu-led federal government had made Nigerians more hopeless in the last one year.
“People have lost hope. It pains me to see our people lining up to collect cups of palliatives. Renewed Hope has turned into hopelessness. People have lost hope.
“The last one year has been a year of nothing but deception, destitution and hopelessness.
“From next week, they will start telling us their propaganda. What have they done to benefit the ordinary people? In a span of one year, they have brought millions of people back into multidimensional poverty, they have pushed millions more children out of school because their parents cannot pay their school fees,” he said.
Yusuf described the economic management team of the President as “tax collectors” rather than “economists”.
“The economic team, to me, looks more like tax collectors than economists. Taxation does not grow the economy; only production does,” he said.
Recall that President Tinubu campaigned on the mantra of the ‘Renewed Hope.’
The President was sworn-in on May 29, 2023, after a keenly contested election in February 2023.
Since inception, the President Tinubu administration has introduced some reforms such as petrol subsidy removal and the unification of the foreign exchange windows.
Chinedum Anayo 
saharandaily