Our Reporter, Abuja
Rghts activist and constitutional scholar, Professor Chidi Odinkalu, has sharply criticised the National Assembly’s decision to “re-gazette” four controversial tax reform laws, arguing that the move has no basis in law and compounds what he described as an already grave illegality.
Reacting via his X (formerly Twitter) handle on Friday, Odinkalu said the National Assembly (@nassnigeria) had effectively conceded that the tax laws currently gazetted were forged, but was now seeking to cure the defect through an unlawful administrative action. According to him, the legislature lacks the power to order the re-gazetting of a document that has already been gazetted as a duly passed law.
“The records should be clear,” Odinkalu wrote, insisting that “the @nassnigeria has no power to order a ‘regazetting’ of an already gazetted document claiming to be a duly passed law.”
He added that the proposed step amounted to “heaping unlawfulness upon criminality.”
Odinkalu outlined what he said were the only two lawful pathways available to the legislature if it intended to replace the disputed versions of the tax laws.
First, he said, the National Assembly could formally table the gazetted legislation before both chambers, repeal it through due legislative process, and replace it with the version that was duly passed, which would then be sent for gazetting. Alternatively, he said, the legislature could approach the courts to have the gazetted laws struck down, after which the correct versions could be lawfully gazetted.
“Whichever course they choose,” Odinkalu stressed, “those who forged the law should be identified and brought to account. The people deserve that.”
The comments followed reports earlier on Friday that the National Assembly had ordered the re-gazetting of four major tax reform laws amid public controversy over alleged alterations made after the bills were passed by both chambers. The disputed laws have sparked concern among civil society groups and legal experts, who argue that discrepancies between the versions passed by lawmakers and those gazetted undermine legislative integrity and the rule of law.
In a statement issued on Friday, the House of Representatives spokesperson, Akin Rotimi, said the leadership of both chambers had directed the Clerk to the National Assembly to re-gazette the Acts and issue Certified True Copies (CTCs) of the versions “duly passed by both chambers of the National Assembly.”
Rotimi maintained that the exercise was “purely administrative” and intended to protect the integrity of the legislative record, dismissing suggestions that the National Assembly was attempting to rewrite the law outside constitutional procedures.
However, Odinkalu’s intervention has intensified the debate, placing renewed focus on accountability for the alleged forgery and on the constitutional limits of legislative authority once a law has been gazetted.
