KEY POINTS

• Bode George fumes at Tinubu’s policies, saying hunger and inflation has worsened.
• A call for immediate reduction of petrol price and palliatives for struggling Nigerians.
• He blames the economic hardship on subsidy removal and forex unification.

Bode George, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Board of Trustees, BoT member and elder statesman, yesterday criticized President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s economic policies, accusing the administration of fueling hunger and hardship in the country in a video.

George spoke describing Tinubu’s media chat as lacking empathy and also humanity for suffering Nigerians.

“All that I can hear is hunger and anger in the land,” George said after three stampedes at food queues killed 67 people. And he lambasted Tinubu’s insistence that his reforms are working. ‘We are not feeling it; it’s getting worse by the day,’ he said. You gotta be real.” Hunger doesn’t believe in your talk.”

Fuel subsidy removal and economic policies criticism

Calling for immediate reduction in the price of petrol and palliatives to ease suffering Nigerians, George also called on the government to immediately use the window of opportunity created by the recent drop in the international price of oil to sell off its strategic petrol reserve in countries like France, the US and Europe.

Tinubu’s policies that also saw the removal of fuel subsidy in May this year and unification of forex windows are to blame for compounding the country’s economic woes, he claimed.

The prices of petrol have gone up since the subsidy removal from N200/litre to more than N1,000/litre, raising transportation costs for those who use petrol to run their generators.

In addition, the value of the naira has crashed in the parallel market, with exchange rates shooting from $1/N700 to above $1/N1600.

“Fuel queues are commonplace, businesses collapse and inflation surges,” George said. “It’s time for the government to review its policies and eugenic decisions and concentrate on what would bring immediate relief to its people.”

Tinubu’s media chat on Thursday had the President sticking to his guns on the subsidy removal as he said, “We can no longer be Father Christmas to neighboring countries.” George on the other hand criticized this position saying Nigerians are undergoing the inconvenience of these reforms without commensurate benefits.