The Chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee, Taiwo Oyedele, has addressed the controversy that the recently enacted tax reform laws, scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2026, were secretly altered after their passage by the National Assembly.
This follows the demand by civil society organisations, and lawmakers for an independent probe into the purported discrepancies.
Oppositions like a former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, and the 2023 Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, had also called for the suspension of the laws’ implementation.
The matter started last week when a member of the House of Representatives, Abdulsamad Dasuki, raised concerns, alleging discrepancies between the tax laws passed by the National Assembly and the versions later gazetted and made available to the public.
Dasuki argued that the differences amounted to a breach of lawmakers’ legislative rights, insisting that the gazetted versions did not reflect what was debated and approved on the floor of the House.
However, speaking on Channels Television’s Morning Brief on Monday, Oyedele dismissed claims circulating in the media as false.
“Before you can say there is a difference between what was gazetted and what was passed, we have what has not been gazetted. We don’t have what was passed,” Oyedele said.
“The official harmonised bills certified by the clerk, which the National Assembly sent to the President, we don’t have a copy to compare. Only the lawmakers can say authoritatively what was sent.
“It should be the House of Representatives or Senate version. It should be the harmonised version certified by the clerk. Even me, I cannot say that I have it. I only have what was presented to Mr President to sign,” he added.
Oyedele said he contacted the House of Representatives committee over a controversial provision, Section 41(8), which reportedly required the payment of a 20 per cent deposit.
“I know that particular provision is not in the final gazette, but it was in the draft gazette. Some people decided that they should write the report of the committee before the committee had met, and it had circulated everywhere,” he said.
According to him, the committee informed him that it had not met on the issue.
“What is out there in the media did not come from the committee set up by the House of Representatives. I think we should allow them do the investigation,” Oyedele added.
President Bola Tinubu recently signed four tax reform bills into law, which the Federal Government has described as the most significant overhaul of Nigeria’s tax system in decades.
The laws — the Nigeria Tax Act, the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, the Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act, and the Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act — are to operate under a single authority, the Nigeria Revenue Service.
The reforms, which faced opposition from some federal lawmakers, particularly from the northern part of the country, before their passage, are aimed at simplifying tax compliance, expanding the tax base, eliminating overlapping taxes, and modernising revenue collection across the federal, state and local governments.
