Chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee, Taiwo Oyedele, has said the National Assembly has the constitutional authority to suspend the planned January 2026 implementation of Nigeria’s tax reform laws, if lawmakers deem it necessary.
Oyedele made the clarification on Monday during an interview on Channels Television, responding to allegations that some provisions of the tax reform laws were altered after passage and before they were gazetted.
According to him, calls for suspending the reforms had already been gaining traction even before the controversy over alleged alterations emerged. However, he argued that opposition to the reforms has been driven largely by misinformation and fear, rather than a proper understanding of the substance of the laws.
Oyedele stressed that any decision to delay or suspend implementation lies entirely with the National Assembly, not the tax reform committee.
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“If we even want to postpone the implementation of the law, it has to be the lawmakers. That’s far beyond my pay grade,” he said.
“That decision has to be made, and I believe it will depend on what their findings from this investigation reveal.”
While acknowledging lawmakers’ powers, Oyedele warned that delaying the reforms would amount to preserving a tax system that disproportionately burdens low-income earners and small businesses.
He said the existing framework leaves about 98 percent of workers overtaxed, while small businesses are subjected to multiple taxes without meaningful exemptions. Minimum taxes, he added, would continue to apply to low-income earners and businesses that are not profitable if the reforms are suspended.
Oyedele also criticised the current value-added tax structure, noting that it continues to increase the cost of essential consumption such as food, healthcare and education, while inefficient and distortionary tax incentives remain intact.
“So we need to be clear about what we are asking for,” he said, stressing that calls for suspension must be weighed against the economic and social costs of maintaining the status quo.
On how to address the alleged alterations, Oyedele said that even if investigations confirm that some provisions were changed after passage, such sections should simply be isolated and treated as invalid.
His preferred approach, he explained, would be to proceed with implementing the law as duly passed by the National Assembly, while separately investigating how the disputed provisions were introduced and determining appropriate corrective actions.
He accused certain interests of mobilising unsuspecting Nigerians against reforms designed to benefit the broader population, using fear and misinformation to undermine public support.
Addressing how the discrepancies may have occurred, Oyedele pointed to systemic weaknesses and heavy reliance on manual processes throughout the legislative and executive workflow.
He explained that bills go through multiple manual stages, including note-taking during debates, harmonisation between the House of Representatives and the Senate, legal review by the Ministry of Justice, presidential assent and eventual gazetting. The lack of robust quality assurance mechanisms at these stages, he said, creates room for errors or unintended changes not just for tax laws but for legislation generally.
According to Oyedele, the controversy should be used as an opportunity to strengthen Nigeria’s lawmaking and gazetting processes to ensure that laws passed by the National Assembly accurately reflect legislative intent and are not tampered with.
The debate follows concerns raised last week by a member of the House of Representatives, Abdulsammad Dasuki (PDP, Sokoto), who alleged material discrepancies between the gazetted tax reform laws and the versions debated and approved by both chambers of the National Assembly.
Dasuki said his review of the House and Senate records, alongside the harmonised versions of the bills, revealed differences in the gazetted copies currently in circulation. The House has since promised to investigate the claims, fuelling renewed calls for the suspension of the tax reforms scheduled to take effect in January 2026.
