The Minister of State for Finance, Taowo Oyedele, has denied acknowledging errors in Nigeria’s new tax laws, despite a video evidence of him explaining how the legislative process led to “problems we identified” in the tax laws.
On April 10, a statement from the fiscal reforms committee said Oyedele acknowledged that errors occurred due to manual processes and multiple stages of review during the law-making process, adding that steps were underway to correct the issues through a proposed finance bill.
However, in another statement posted on the minister’s official X account on Sunday, the committee said reports suggesting Oyedele “finally admitted errors” in the new tax laws were misleading and misrepresented his comments.
“These publications misrepresent the Minister’s statements, falsely alleging that he urged Nigerians to await the outcome of a “legislative probe”, a process that has long been concluded and the gazetted copies certified by the National Assembly published since early January 2026,” the post reads.
“This twisted narrative is unhelpful as it risks distorting public understanding and misleading the very people the reforms were designed to benefit.”
The fiscal committee said his remarks were made during a fireside chat at the NBA-SLP conference in Lagos, where he highlighted early positive impacts from the tax reforms, including increased business registrations and a rise in the number of individuals captured in the tax net.
According to the minister, the number of individuals registered for tax purposes has increased from fewer than 10 million before the reforms to over 100 million, while more informal businesses are now seeking registration with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
Noting that no law is perfect, he was quoted as saying ongoing stakeholder engagement would help identify any gaps.
“Ongoing stakeholder engagement is essential to identify and address any errors or gaps for appropriate legislative updates through Finance Bills as part of a continuous improvement process,” the statement added.
In the referenced video, Oyedele said the law-making process was prone to inconsistencies due to “multiple stages of manual editing and updating”.
He said he reviewed several versions of the legislation and identified discrepancies, including a reduction in the small business threshold from N100 million to N50 million in an earlier gazetted version.
“When this allegation of alteration was made, it didn’t come to me as a surprise because my surprise happened before then. My surprise is, being very much involved with the lawmaking process, I wasn’t impressed,” he said in the video.
“This process cannot guarantee quality assurance. There are just too many stages of manual editing, updating.
“So you have a meeting, right? It might be a house committee, it might be a senate committee. You make your contributions, and somebody is making the notes, and those people will go and update. You don’t know how many people are lobbying them. When they finish updating, they bring it back.
“You harmonise between house and senate. When you finish harmonising, you send it. When you send it, usually, it will go to the ministry of justice, it goes to the president. The president will sign. You send the information to the gazette.
“In each of those stages, if you know how many versions I reviewed, it was a nightmare.”
The minister added that his team pushed back on several inconsistencies, leading to a revised version of the document.
“At that point, about 90 per cent of the problems we identified had been corrected but not all of it, and that was already three months. So I said, if you want to wait to have this thing to be perfected, we will not have the transition period,” Oyedele said.
“When they raised the issue of alteration, I said to myself, maybe someone will pay attention that this is a process problem, and let’s use the opportunity and the national embarrassment to fix this problem once and for all. That never happened.”
On December 17, 2025, Abdussamad Dasuki, a member of the house of representatives from Sokoto, claimed that the gazetted tax laws available to Nigerians are different from the ones passed by the national assembly.
