Tope Fasua, an economist and special adviser to the president on economic affairs, has accused Nigerians of hiking prices of goods and services and causing inflation to make President Bola Tinubu’s government look bad.

In a Facebook post on Monday, Mr Fasua argued that Nigeria’s inflation orchestrated by citizens to portray the government in bad light.

“I’ve been hammering on this for the past three months because I know Nigerians. Inflation peaked at 34.8 per cent because everybody has hiked prices of everything,” Mr Fasua said.

He added, “I kept insisting back in the day that our inflation was driven by other forces different from orthodoxy…things that Adam Smith and the classical may not have imagined. Prices were increased based on whims. Sometimes increased because it will make the government look bad.”

Mr Fasua made this statement reacting to a social media post that an AP Petrol station at Maitama, Abuja, still pays its pump attendants N10,000 per month despite economic hardship.

Condemning entrepreneurs who have not reviewed their staff salaries despite minimum wage review, Mr Fasua said, “No so-called entrepreneur should be paying any staff at the same level as 2 years ago simply because they cannot protest or have no voice in social media. More of these situations should be pointed out wherever they exist please.”

In the past two years, Mr Tinubu’s dual policies of fuel subsidy removal and exchange rate unification have led to a significant increase in fuel prices, from N145 to over N1,000 and later to about N900, while the naira has collapsed from about N700 to a dollar to over N1,600 to a dollar.

Similarly, food prices, transportation, and living costs have risen astronomically due to Mr Tinubu’s economic policies.

With inflation at 24 per cent, a drop from 34 per cent after rebasing the economy under Mr Tinubu, Nigeria recorded the largest increase in acute food insecurity globally in 2024, according to the 2025 Global Report on Food Crises published by the Global Network Against Food Crises in collaboration with the Food Security Information Network and UNICEF.

The International Monetary Fund reported that poverty and food insecurity remained high under Mr Tinubu, while the World Bank’s Africa Pulse report of April 2025 also stated that Nigeria, under Mr Tinubu, has the highest number of extremely poor people globally, warning that more Nigerians will be plunged into poverty by 2027.