Tinubu has surrounded himself with tax collectors instead of economists, says chieftain of  Northern Elder Forum 

A political commentator and member of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Prof Usman Yusuf, says rather than inject the Nigerian people with some hope capsules, the administration of President Bola Tinubu has made Nigerians more hopeless in the last one year since the assumption of the ex-Lagos governor as the country’s President.

Yusuf, a former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics programme.

“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,” Yusuf said.

Tinubu, whose campaign mantra was ‘Renewed Hope’, was sworn in as President on May 29, 2023 after a keenly contested election in the February of the same year.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain introduced some sweeping reforms such as petrol subsidy removal and the unification of the foreign exchange windows, twin policies that have been vocally flayed by critics as Nigerians battle surging inflation and skyrocketing cost of living that have sparked protests and scathing criticisms in the country of late.

With the inflationary pressure and the attendant effects on the economy, the Tinubu administration continued to placate Nigerians to endure the pain of the moment which it promised would be temporary.

However, Yusuf said “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,” the NEF member continued. “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.”

The Ex-NHIS secretary also whipped the economic management Team of the President, describing the members as “tax collectors” rather than “economists”.

“The economic team, to me, looks more like tax collectors than economists. Taxation does not grow economy; only production does,” he stated.