A group, the African Sociocultural Harmony and Enlightenment (ASHE) Foundation has expressed concerns over the downturn of the Nigerian economy despite the cabinet reshuffle by President Bola Tinubu.

The President of the group, Prince Justice Faloye, in a statement yesterday, said that the removal of the Coordinating Minister of Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, and replacement with Mr. Taiwo Oyedele, would create more chaos for the country’s economy.

According to Faloye, religion and ethnicity aside, this administration and Nigeria’s political leadership since 1978 have been ideologically disposed to arrest economic development and prosperity.

He said President Tinubu, removed Edun, “a neoliberal financial professional, who wiped out half of the country’s GDP and increased poverty from 38 per cent to 63 per cent, and replaced him with Oyedele, a tax accountant behind retrogressive indirect taxes and the infamous 2026 Tax Reforms.”

According to him, this is a neocolonial administration focused on revenue generation for power backers through rent-seeking, not wealth creation to uplift the people.

Faloye noted that previous presidents drew a poverty line they couldn’t push the masses over, saying that the late former president Muhammadu Buhari, reputed to be the meanest and most merciless, publicly stated, couldn’t “do it to his people.”

He stated that President Tinubu removed subsidies, devalued the currency, hiked indirect taxes and imposed other neoliberal policies that rob the poor to enrich the rich, policies that have failed in sixty black nations since the late seventies.