Tinubu’s Tax Tragedy And The New Year

 By Kenneth Okonkwo

Tax is generally regarded as a burden on the people. It is the compulsory contribution of the citizens to the development of their country. The citizens are expected to pay a proportion of their income to the government in trust, in return for the provision of needed infrastructure for economic and social development.

The unfortunate thing about taxation is that it is still compulsory for the citizens to pay it, even if the government fails to comply with its side of the bargain. In a corrupt society, the government embezzles the tax paid by the people, and spends it on ostentatious lifestyle while the people wallow in abject poverty and penury.

Nigeria is even worse, as the problems of the people are compounded by serious security challenges that witness travellers kidnapped into the forests to spend the Christmas with animals and vampires rather than in the comfort of their homes. Most people didn’t travel to their ancestral homes because they are scared of being robbed, kidnapped, or terrorised on the roads. They couldn’t fly because they couldn’t afford the air ticket, as a one-way ticket from Abuja to other cities costs almost N500,000.00 (Five hundred thousand naira). Even travelling through the sea is scary as boats keep capsizing due to lack of maintenance of the aged boats. Inflation prevented them from enjoying the sumptuous meals usually prepared during Christmas festivities. They resigned their fate to God whom they believe still love them so much that He sent His only begotten son Jesus to save them, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. This hope is what is still keeping most Nigerians alive. 

It’s uncharitable that under this canopy of hopelessness witnessed by Nigerians this Yuletide, the best and first gift Tinubu will give them for the new year is the imposition of more burden of taxes on them. During Jonathan’s regime, the removal of fuel subsidy was billed to commence on January 1st of that year. Tinubu and his opposition leaders as they then were, accused Jonathan of being clueless and perpetrating evil on Nigerians. 

Tinubu removed all the fuel subsidy the same day he assumed office as President. In addition, he slated his tax burdens on Nigerians to commence from January 1st, 2026. It is safe to conclude that by his own standard of judgement of Jonathan’s regime, Tinubu has taken over the position of being clueless and in addition of being evil on Nigerians. 

It’s frustrating enough to look forward to an increased burden for a new year in which people are already suffering from hunger and hardship, but it’s sheer evil to realise that the Tax Act, which the government is trying to impose on the people is fake and forged and tilting towards usurping the powers of the legislature and judiciary, and concentrating more powers on the executive which had already become too powerful by the normal powers donated to it by the Constitution and some questionable judgements of the Supreme Court. To resort to falsification of passed laws to accumulate more powers may signal the end of our democracy if allowed to stand. 

Separation of powers means that the Constitution recognises that there are three arms of government, namely the legislature, executive, and the judiciary. The legislature makes the law, the executive implements the law, and the judiciary interprets the law. This division and allotment of powers to different arms of government is to avoid the concentration of powers in one person and avoid the person having absolute powers because as the old saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In pursuance of this separation of powers, section 58(1) of the 1999 Constitution states that “the power of the National Assembly to make laws shall be exercised by bills passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives and, … assented to by the President.” 

As can be seen from this section, the only duty of the President in the law making process of the government is to give assent to the already passed law (Act) by the National Assembly within one month. The President is not permitted to add or subtract from the harmonised Bill, passed into an Act by the National Assembly before assenting to it. Any such addition amounts to an act of forgery of the Act he has signed and such action renders the whole Act a nullity and indeed turns it to a criminal act.

For the avoidance of doubt, according to the dictionary, forgery is a criminal act involving the deliberate manipulation of documents with the intent to deceive or defraud individuals, corporations, or governments. This can range from the simple act of falsifying, altering, or counterfeiting of documents. In Nigeria, forgery is a felony with punishments varying by the code applied (Criminal Code or Penal Code), generally leading to imprisonment for up to three years (Criminal Code) or potentially longer, up to 14 years, under the Penal Code.

As regards the purported Tax Reforms Act signed by Tinubu, it’s forged because of the alteration of certain provisions in the Bill harmonised by the National Assembly. Hon Abdussamad Dasuki, a member of the House of Representatives, PDP, Sokoto, on the 17th day of December, 2025, on the floor of the National Assembly, raised an alarm that the gazetted copy of the Tax Reform Act signed by the President is different from the harmonised copy he participated in passing in the National Assembly. 

Another member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Mansur Manu Soro (Bauchi State), called for the immediate suspension of the Tax Laws, 2025, citing what he described as “material discrepancies between the bills duly passed by the National Assembly and the versions subsequently gazetted.” According to him, the differences are neither minor nor accidental, but deliberate alterations, warning that they amount to a constitutional breach, as legislative authority is vested solely in the National Assembly under the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He alleged that the altered provisions removed key oversight and reporting mechanisms that were expressly approved by the National Assembly, while introducing new coercive and fiscal powers for the executive that were not approved by lawmakers. 

Some of the altered provisions include sections 3(1)(b)), 39(3), 41(8), 60(1) and so on of the harmonised Bill. Specifically, section 60(1) in the gazetted version confers on the tax authority absolute garnishee power in respect of assets garnisheed without recourse to judicial process thereby negating procedural fairness. On the contrary, the Act passed requires a court order. Similarly section 60(4-5) imposes obligation on some tax authorities to require a court order to dispose of garnishee property while it exempts others. 

This is contrary to the Act passed by National Assembly which imposes obligation on ALL tax authorities to obtain court order before disposing of any garnisheed assets. This is a usurpation of both legislative and judicial powers. What this simply means is that the tax authorities can assess their own version of what they believe you should pay, arrest you if you don’t pay it, seize your money in the bank, and use your money to pay for their own calculation of what your tax will be, without court order. This will be tragic especially when one remembers that Tinubu entered into a nocturnal agreement with France on our tax administration policy and has refused to disclose the full details of the Memorandum of Understanding.

This tragic new year gift from Tinubu should immediately be withdrawn from circulation and its implementation suspended. The first reason is that the purported Act is forged and the President cannot impose a forged document on Nigerians. The second reason is that the National Assembly does not have the constitutional power to amend a forged Act. They can only amend the laws (ACTs) made by them. The entire Tax Reform Act, having been corrupted by the virus of forgery, has become a nullity and the only reasonable thing to do is to withdraw it and suspend its implementation until the whole issues are resolved.

It’s also unconscionable that Nigerian people, who are passing through a lot, owing to the withdrawal of fuel subsidy, which has made the cost of food and transportation go beyond their reach, should be subjected to increased burden of taxation. Farmers who could not go to their farms to farm because of insecurity will be forced to pay more taxes directly or indirectly. If the forged Tax Reform Act is allowed to stand, more people will be liable to pay taxes than the harmonised Bill allowed.

 This country has suffered a lot under Tinubu’s government that Nigerians have nicknamed his government the T-Pain government. Adding more pain to Nigerians as a new year gift in the name of increased tax is ungodly. Let this tax be suspended till the economy improves and the people become more empowered to pay taxes. Tinubu will simply be taxing hunger and hardship of Nigerians if he stubbornly refused to shelve the implementation of this forged Tax Act, and this may lead to a kwashiokor situation.

The suspension of the forged Tax Act will not create any lacuna in the tax laws because the suspension will automatically reactivate the old tax laws and render them operative pending the rectification of all the material discrepancies in the passed and gazetted copies of the Act. It is the new tax laws that repealed the old tax laws. The suspension of the new forged Tax laws automatically suspends the repeal of the old laws. Any attempt to do otherwise will officially and automatically designate Nigeria as a country of particular concern in the area of forgery. This means that Nigeria has adopted forgery as its official public policy. God forbid!

*Okonkwo is a commentator on public issues