Senator Ali Ndume, once the senate’s majority leader, wants President Bola Tinubu to stop next month’s rollout of Nigeria’s new tax laws after a lawmaker swore the printed version isn’t what the national assembly passed.
On 17 December, Abdussamad Dasuki (Sokoto, House of Reps) told colleagues the official gazette clashes with the bill they actually voted on. The house swiftly set up a seven-member panel to dig into the mismatch.
In a Wednesday statement, Ndume asked Tinubu to name a separate ad-hoc team to verify the forgery claim. Pushing ahead on 1 January, he warned, would leave the entire tax reform resting on quicksand.
“With the controversy surrounding it, the President should constitute a team to verify the veracity of the claim and act accordingly,” he said.
“As a responsive leader that he has always been, he should look at it to find out if the copy that was signed—whether the claim of alterations was genuine—so that he will do the needful to bring the controversy to rest.
“If not, the controversy will continue. You can’t build on nothing.”
Ndume added that civil-society groups, the Arewa community and the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) are all singing the same tune: suspend the law and probe the forgery allegation.
On Tuesday the NBA echoed the demand, saying the row “casts doubts on the integrity and transparency of Nigeria’s lawmaking process.”
