‘Renewed Hope has turned to Hopelessness’, Northern Elder chieftain speaks on Tinubu’s one year in office
Tinubu, whose campaign slogan was 'Renewed Hope', was sworn in as President on May 29, 2023, following a closely contested election in February of that year.
Prof Usman Yusuf, a political commentator and member of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), has said that rather than instilling hope in Nigerians, President Bola Tinubu’s administration has made them even more hopeless in the year since the ex-Lagos governor took office.
Yusuf, the former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), spoke on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics series.
“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 contest 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.