The Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been criticized by a member of the Northern Elders Forum, NEF, Prof Usman Yusuf who described it as hopeless.

According to Yusuf, the president has worsened the plight of Nigerians after one year saying his administration has failed to inject Nigerians with the hope capsules.

Yusuf, a former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, made this statement in an interview with Channels Television’s Sunday Politics monitored by MyNigeria.com.

“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 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.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu won the presidential elections in 2023 after campaigning on the mantra of the ‘Renewed Hope.’

Since its inception, the President Tinubu administration has introduced some reforms such as petrol subsidy removal and the unification of the foreign exchange windows.