Oyedele dismisses claims on Nigeria’s tax laws

The chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee, Taiwo Oyedele, has rejected claims that Nigeria’s newly enacted tax reform laws were altered after their passage by the National Assembly, saying materials circulating in the media are false and based on documents that are not authoritative.

The dispute erupted after a member of the House of Representatives, Abdulsamad Dasuki, alleged discrepancies between the tax laws passed by lawmakers and the versions later gazetted and released to the public.

Civil society groups and opposition figures, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, subsequently called for the suspension of the laws, which are scheduled to take effect on 1 January 2026.

Speaking on Channels Television’s Morning Brief on Monday, Mr Oyedele said the controversy rests on a fundamental problem, which is the absence of the officially certified harmonised bill passed by the National Assembly.

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“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,” he said.

He explained that it is the only document that can authoritatively confirm what lawmakers approved is the harmonised version certified by the clerk of the National Assembly and transmitted to the president for assent.

According to him, that version is not publicly available, making comparisons with the gazetted law unreliable.

“The official harmonised bills certified by the clerk, which the National Assembly sent to the President, we don’t have a copy to compare,” Mr Oyedele said.

He added that neither the House of Representatives’ version nor the Senate’s version can be treated as final on their own, stressing that only lawmakers involved in the harmonisation process can confirm what was sent to the president.

He also addressed claims relating to a supposed provision requiring a 20 per cent deposit under Section 41(8), which has featured prominently in circulating reports.

Mr Oyedele said that provision appeared in an earlier draft but does not exist in the final gazetted law. He said enquiries he made showed that a document being circulated as a committee report did not originate from the House committee set up to review the issue.

“What is out there in the media did not come from the committee set up by the House of Representatives,” he said.

Beyond the immediate controversy, Mr Oyedele said the episode exposed deeper weaknesses in Nigeria’s legislative process, particularly around quality control and document security.

He warned that legislation is too important to be left vulnerable to confusion arising from multiple versions of the same law, noting that similar problems had occurred in the past with major laws such as the Petroleum Industry Bill and the Companies and Allied Matters Act.

President Bola Tinubu recently signed four tax reform bills into law, the Nigeria Tax Act, the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, the Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act and the Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act, which are designed to operate under a single authority, the Nigeria Revenue Service.

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The federal government has described the reforms as the most significant overhaul of the country’s tax system in decades.

The laws, which faced resistance from some federal lawmakers, particularly from the northern part of the country, are intended to simplify tax compliance, expand the tax base, remove overlapping taxes and modernise revenue collection across federal, state and local governments.

For now, Mr Oyedele said the appropriate step is to allow lawmakers to conclude their investigation into the matter, after which any confirmed issues can be addressed based on the facts rather than speculation.