Chairman of the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), Mr Zacch Adedeji, has dismissed allegations that the country’s newly enacted tax reform laws were altered after being passed by the National Assembly. He maintained that only the officially gazetted versions of the Acts had legal effect and were binding on taxpayers and revenue authorities.

Speaking in an interview on Arise TV, Mr Adedeji said it was misleading to compare draft or chamber copies of the bills with the final gazetted laws, stressing that revenue agencies were constitutionally required to implement only what had been passed by the legislature, assented to by the president, and formally gazetted.

“The process of lawmaking is very clear,” he said. “When the President assents to a bill, it goes back to the National Assembly, gets gazetted, and that is what is given to us. Nobody, except the National Assembly, has authority over the vote book. Our duty is only to implement the law as passed.”

In December 2024. a member of the House of Representatives, Mr Abdussamad Dasuki, had alleged that there were discrepancies between the tax reform law passed by the National Assembly and the gazetted copy available to the public.

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Dasuki, who represents Kebbe/Tambuwal federal constituency of Sokoto, raised a point of privilege on the floor of the lower legislative chamber during Wednesday’s plenary.

“What was passed on the floor is not what is gazetted. Mr speaker, honourable colleagues, I was here, I gave my vote, and it was counted, and I am seeing something completely different,” he said.

The lawmaker said he obtained copies of the gazetted law from the Ministry of Information and found that they were different from the copies harmonised and approved by the House, while calling on Speaker, Mr Tajudeen Abbas, to critically examine what was passed by the legislators and what was gazetted by the government.

It’s not true, says Adedeji

However, Mr Adedeji said the claims lacked verified evidence and did not reflect the constitutional procedure for enacting laws. He said under the law, an Act would take effect only after presidential assent and official gazetting, noting that the gazetted text was the final legal authority in any dispute.

He also dismissed suggestions that the executive or revenue authorities could alter a law after passage, stressing that it wasn’t possible. “On what basis will the executive go and alter a law? To do what? The relationship between the tax administrator and the taxpayer is symbiotic. The more prosperous the taxpayer, the better it is for revenue.”

Mr Adedeji added that resistance to the reforms was expected, especially where entrenched interests felt threatened. “With every reform, you will have people who prefer the status quo. That should not distract us from the focus of the reform,” he said.

He explained that the current reforms represented a fundamental restructuring of Nigeria’s revenue system — not just a name change from the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) to the Nigeria Revenue Service.

“Nigeria Revenue Service is not branding,” he said. “It is a total institutional upgrade — moving from fragmented revenue administration to a modern, digitalised, centralised and intelligence-driven system.”

Views on alteration

Earlier, Nigeria’s former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), had described the alleged ‘unauthorised alterations’ as ‘a direct assault on our constitutional democracy.’

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He had said this on his X handle in December 2025, stressing that the draconian overreach by the executive undermined the principle of legislative supremacy in lawmaking and revealed a government more interested in extracting wealth from struggling citizens than empowering them to prosper.

In his reaction, Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Mr Peter Obi, also said Nigeria had migrated from padded budgets to forged tax laws, noting that it was a reflection of how the nation had nosedived in values.

Writing on his X handle on Saturday. Mr Obi had said that the nation’s shame had continued to unfold, evident in the decisions made by its leaders, even at the highest levels of government. He noted that the shame was highlighted by a ‘deeply troubling’ and ‘frankly unacceptable’ discrepancies between what the legislature passed and what was ultimately published as law by the executive.In

In spite of these views, the tax laws are already in place. The unresolved capital gains tax (CGT), which was raised from 10 percent to 30 percent, is not being discussed.