What started as a seemingly routine attempt by the Bola Tinubu administration to reform Nigeria’s tax system has now spiralled into something far more troubling — allegations that a law properly passed by the National Assembly and signed by the President may have been altered after assent and presented to Nigerians as binding law.
If proven true, this would represent an extraordinary constitutional breach: an illegality disguised as legislation, enforced not by debate or democratic consent, but by document manipulation.
What makes this case even more unsettling is how it came to light. Not through whistleblowers hidden deep within the bureaucracy, nor through civil society audits, but from within the legislature itself. Abdulsammad Dasuki, a member of the House of Representatives, raised a point of privilege after personally comparing the harmonised tax bill passed by both chambers with the version later published in the official gazette. What he found was alarming — they did not match.
After days of painstaking review of Votes and Proceedings, committee records, and the gazetted text, Dasuki reached a stark conclusion: he voted for one law, but Nigerians were being governed by another. His intervention triggered wider concern among lawmakers, many of whom requested certified true copies of the assented bill to confirm what exactly the President signed. According to multiple reports, those requests were refused.
That refusal changed everything. What might have been dismissed as a clerical mix-up quickly became an institutional crisis. When lawmakers are blocked from accessing the very law they passed and the President signed, the matter edges dangerously close to criminal constitutional misconduct.
As scrutiny intensified, analysts, journalists, and civil society groups began pointing out specific discrepancies. These reportedly include expanded discretionary powers for tax authorities, weakened reporting and oversight mechanisms, altered enforcement thresholds, and provisions that appear to centralise greater control in the executive arm. These are not harmless typos. They affect who has the power to tax Nigerians, how that power is exercised, and who holds it accountable.
Mistakes happen in all legislative systems. A misnumbered section or misplaced word does not invalidate a law. But when changes shift power, remove safeguards, or rewrite institutional balance, they cease to be errors and become illegality.
A government gazette is meant to publish the law — not invent it. It provides evidence of what exists; it cannot lawfully create what was never enacted or assented to. That is why the official response so far has raised more questions than it answered. Early denials dismissed the controversy as partisan noise. Yet on December 26, 2025, the House of Representatives announced the creation of an ad hoc committee to investigate the entire process — from harmonisation to assent to gazetting.
More telling still, the House leadership directed that the tax laws be re-gazetted and that certified true copies of the duly passed versions be issued. Re-gazetting is not a routine act. It is an implicit admission that the existing gazette cannot be fully trusted as a faithful record of legislative intent. If nothing were wrong, there would be nothing to correct.
Supporters of the administration have urged Nigerians to trust the President’s integrity. But this issue is not about personal character. It is about whether the law currently being enforced is the same law the President signed. Trust cannot replace evidence. The signed document must be produced and compared, line by line, with the gazetted version.
Globally, there is little precedent for this kind of controversy. In the United States, the 2006 Deficit Reduction Act dispute involved a clerical transmission error before assent. Courts upheld the signed text. In the Philippines in 1964, the wrong version of a bill was signed, and the mistake was openly acknowledged and corrected. In neither case was a law allegedly altered after presidential assent.
Nigeria’s situation, if confirmed, is far more disturbing. It suggests that the correct law was signed — but a different one was published and enforced.
This naturally raises a troubling question: why would anyone alter a law after it has been passed and signed? While motives can only be inferred, the alleged changes conveniently expand bureaucratic power, weaken oversight, and centralise control at a time of fiscal strain. That alignment alone should worry every Nigerian.
Even more alarming is the broader implication. If a major tax law can be altered post-assent without immediate detection, what confidence can citizens have in the integrity of other statutes? Nigeria has passed hundreds of complex laws over the years, many rarely scrutinised after gazetting. This case opens the chilling possibility that such practices may not be entirely new.
That prospect should transcend politics. Law is the foundation of collective life. If its text is unstable — if it can be quietly modified after constitutional procedures are complete — then legality itself becomes fragile. Governance drifts from rule of law to rule by document manipulation.
The gravity of this cannot be overstated. Altering a law after assent is not a harmless bureaucratic shortcut. It is a constitutional offence with nationwide consequences. Nigerians would, in effect, be taxed under provisions that were never lawfully enacted.
This is why a transparent, exhaustive investigation is essential. The full documentary chain must be laid bare: the harmonised bill passed by both chambers, the text sent for assent, the document signed by the President, and the version gazetted for enforcement. Any divergence must be clearly explained, with responsibility firmly assigned.
If wrongdoing is established, accountability must be real and visible. Quiet corrections will not deter future abuse. As history shows, the absence of consequences is the surest invitation to repeat the crime.
Nigeria now stands at a crossroads. This episode can either be buried under technical language and political loyalty, or it can become a moment of constitutional self-correction. A tax reform built on illegality cannot command legitimacy. And without the integrity of the lawmaking process, no reform — however well-intentioned — can truly stand.
