Oyedele Says Circulating Versions of New Tax Laws Are Fake

The Chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee, Taiwo Oyedele, has dismissed claims that discrepancies exist between the tax reform bills passed by the National Assembly and those later gazetted, insisting that the documents currently circulating in the public domain are not authentic.

Speaking on Channels Television’s Morning Brief on Monday, Oyedele said there is no official basis yet for comparing what was passed by lawmakers with what was gazetted because the harmonised bills certified by the Clerk of the National Assembly are not publicly available.

“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.”

He explained that even members of the executive arm involved in the process do not currently have access to the certified harmonised version of the bills.

“It should be the harmonised version certified by the clerk. Even I cannot say that I have it. I only have what was presented to Mr President to sign,” he stated.

Oyedele further alleged that documents widely circulated on social media and reported by some media organisations do not represent the authentic versions of the tax laws.

“What was circulating and also widely reported by a lot of media organisations is actually fake,” he said.

Addressing concerns over how such confusion could arise, Oyedele described the situation as a systemic and procedural problem rather than the fault of any individual or institution.

“I think it’s a process and system issue that has to be addressed, and I don’t think it is about finger-pointing or looking for who to blame,” he said.

“If you think about the process today, there are a lot of stages with manual hands-on that anything can go wrong.”

He also cautioned against assumptions that the presence of top government officials at the signing of the bills guaranteed full scrutiny of the documents.

“Just because the President, the Speaker, the Senate President, and others were present when the law was signed does not mean you can read 400 pages on the spot and confirm everything was fine,” Oyedele noted.

He urged the public to exercise patience and await the outcome of ongoing investigations into what may have gone wrong in the harmonisation and gazetting process of the new tax laws.