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The House of Representatives has constituted a seven-member ad-hoc committee to investigate alleged discrepancies between Nigeria’s gazetted tax laws and the versions passed by the National Assembly.
Speaker of the House, Tajudeen Abbas, announced the composition of the committee during plenary on Thursday.
The committee will be chaired by Muktar Betara and includes Idris Wase (Plateau), James Faleke, Chairman of the House Committee on Finance, Babajimi Benson (Lagos), Sada Soli (Katsina), Iduma Igariwey (Ebonyi) and Fredrick Agbedi (Bayelsa).
According to the Speaker, the committee has been mandated to compare the tax reform bills approved by the National Assembly with the officially gazetted copies currently in circulation, in order to establish the nature and extent of the alleged inconsistencies.
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The decision followed a point of privilege raised on Wednesday by Abdussamad Dasuki, who represents Kebbe/Tambuwal Federal Constituency in Sokoto State. Dasuki alleged that the gazetted versions of the tax laws available to the public do not reflect the harmonised legislation passed by both chambers of the National Assembly.
He told the House that he personally obtained copies of the gazetted laws from the Federal Ministry of Information and discovered significant differences when compared to the versions approved by the legislature.
Dasuki warned that any divergence between laws enacted by parliament and those formally published by the government would amount to a constitutional breach and could undermine the credibility of the National Assembly if not urgently addressed. He therefore urged the Speaker to ensure that all relevant documents, including the harmonised versions of the bills, were subjected to thorough legislative scrutiny.
The House of Representatives passed the tax reform bills in March, while the Senate approved them in May 2025. President Bola Tinubu then signed the bills into law in June, with implementation expected to commence January 2026.
