The Chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee, Taiwo Oyedele, has dismissed claims that he described the tax regulation currently in circulation as fake, insisting that his remarks were taken out of context and wrongly reported.
Oyedele made the clarification on Wednesday during an interview on Arise Television’s Morning Show, amid growing public debate over alleged alterations to key provisions of Nigeria’s tax laws.
He explained that the controversy stemmed from a media interview in which a journalist highlighted apparent discrepancies between sections of the tax law published in the official Government Gazette and a harmonised version attributed to the National Assembly.
The journalist, he said, had asked whether the differences amounted to unauthorised alterations.
According to Oyedele, he had earlier encountered reports claiming that several sections of the law had been substantially modified, with the reports suggesting that the findings originated from a House of Representatives committee allegedly investigating the matter.
However, he said doubts arose when he noticed that one of the cited sections did not exist in the Gazette.
To verify the claims, he contacted a lawmaker reportedly serving on the investigating committee, only to be told that the committee had not even convened.
Oyedele noted that this discovery raised concerns about the credibility of the reports circulating in the public space.
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He stressed that his position during the interview was that it would be unhelpful to engage in discussions about alleged alterations whose source could not be verified and which did not originate from the House committee.
“Some people simply wrote what they thought were alterations and presented them as official findings,” he said, adding that certain materials appeared to have been visually modified to support the narrative.
Oyedele maintained that at no point did he label the tax regulation or the Gazette as fake, saying such claims were the result of misinterpretation and inaccurate reporting of his comments.
He urged the public and the media to exercise caution and rely on verified sources when discussing sensitive legislative and policy matters, particularly those with far-reaching implications for the economy.