A fact-finding committee set up by the Minority Caucus of Nigeria’s House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the country’s National Assembly, has reported that some of Nigeria’s newly enacted tax reform laws were altered in ways it described as unlawful after lawmakers passed them and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria’s President, signed them.
The ad hoc committee said the differences were most noticeable in the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, 2025, one of the four tax reform Acts recently approved by the National Assembly and later assented to by the President.
The panel made the claim on Friday, 23 January 2026, in an interim report that compared certified copies released by the House with versions already published in the official government gazette. Okay News reports that the dispute grew after concerns were raised publicly that the text in circulation did not match what lawmakers approved.
The controversy began after Abdulsamad Dasuki, a member of the House of Representatives, warned during a plenary session that an altered version of the tax laws was circulating and differed from what the legislature passed.
Following that alarm, the House Minority Caucus said in a statement issued on Sunday, 28 December 2025, that it would stand firmly against any move that undermines the constitutional role of the legislature, arguing that pushing altered laws onto Nigerians amounts to an attack on democracy and the authority of the National Assembly.
To follow up on that position, the Minority Caucus, led by Kingsley Chinda, announced on Friday, 2 January 2026, that it had set up a seven-member committee to check the alleged distortions. The committee is chaired by Victor Ogene and includes Aliyu Garu from Bauchi State in north-eastern Nigeria, Stanley Adedeji from Oyo State in south-western Nigeria, Ibe Osonwa from Abia State in south-eastern Nigeria, Marie Ebikake from Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria, Shehu Fagge from Kano State in north-western Nigeria, and Gaza Gbefwi Jonathan from Nasarawa State in north-central Nigeria.
A day later, on Saturday, 3 January 2026, the House spokesperson, Akin Rotimi, said the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, had directed the release of the four tax reform Acts signed into law for public verification and reference. The Acts are the Nigeria Tax Act, 2025; Nigeria Tax Administration Act, 2025; National Revenue Service (Establishment) Act, 2025; and Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act, 2025.
In its preliminary findings signed by Ogene, the committee said its comparison of the certified true copies released by the House with the gazetted texts confirmed Dasuki’s allegations. It said there were “three different versions of the documents in circulation,” with the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, 2025, standing out as the most affected.
The committee also said the instruction to “align” the Acts with the Federal Government Printing Press, the government agency responsible for official printing, suggested that there were procedural problems with the earlier gazetted texts. It argued that those issues amounted to an illegal intrusion into the lawmaking powers of the National Assembly.
On specific provisions, the panel listed multiple areas where it said the gazetted Nigeria Tax Administration Act, 2025, did not match the certified version passed by lawmakers.
It said Section 29(1), which deals with reporting thresholds, was changed. According to the committee, the certified copy set the thresholds at ₦50 million for individuals and ₦100 million for companies. However, it said the gazetted version lowered the individual threshold to ₦25 million instead of ₦250 million, a change it described as an attempt to widen the tax net through an unlawful alteration of a law already passed.
The committee also objected to the addition of new subsections 41(8) and 41(9) in the gazetted version. It said the added provisions required a taxpayer to pay a compulsory 20 per cent deposit of disputed tax amounts before appealing decisions of the Tax Appeal Tribunal to the High Court. The panel said those subsections were not contained in the version approved by the National Assembly.
It further said Section 64 of the gazetted Act expanded enforcement powers in ways that were not in the certified copy, including allowing tax authorities to carry out arrests through law enforcement agencies and to sell seized assets without a court order.
The panel also flagged Section 3(1)(b), saying the gazetted version removed petroleum income tax and value added tax (VAT) from the definition of federal taxes. It described this as a challenge to the exclusive lawmaking powers of the National Assembly.
Another issue it raised was Section 39(3). The committee said the altered text required tax computation for petroleum operations to be done in United States dollars, unlike the version passed by lawmakers, which required computation “in the currency of the transaction.”
Beyond the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, 2025, the committee said it found troubling changes in the Nigerian Revenue Service (Establishment) Act. It reported that Sections 30(1)(d) and 30(3), which provided for National Assembly oversight, were removed from the gazetted version.
It said the authentic law included oversight tools such as summons, reporting obligations, and accountability requirements. In contrast, it said the altered text removed obligations for quarterly and annual reports to the National Assembly, which it said weakened checks and balances.
Citing what it called “anomalies, illegalities, and impunity,” the committee said the issues it found justified a deeper investigation. It asked for more time to carry out a wider examination and thanked the Minority Caucus leadership for assigning it the task.
