Nigeria’s upper legislative chamber, the Senate, on Wednesday constituted a committee to review the contentious Tax Reform Bills now before the National Assembly for passage.
The Committee which has as Chairman the Red Chamber’s Minority Leader, Sen. Abba Moro, was directed to meet with the Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, to fine-tune the grey areas in the proposed fiscal legislation bills that, over the past week had generated controversies, and revert to Senate before the next public hearing.
The Deputy Senate President, Sen. Barau Jibrin, who made this disclosure when he presided over the plenary, said that the executive arm of the government agreed with the Senate that there was he need to resolve all the issues generating the lingering controversies in the bills.
The Senator clarified: Barau said, “We decided to put politics, ethnicity, regionalism aside to sit among ourselves in order to find a way forward in respect to issues affecting the tax reform bills. It is on this note that we extended our view to the executive arm of government, and it was agreed that there should be a forum to sit down to look at the areas that are creating disagreements in order to resolve them so that the entire country will remain united in our efforts to solve our problems.
“Before the introduction of these bills, we know we have been faced with several problems; insecurity that we and the president have been trying to solve, issues about our economy which is in line with global economic problems. And we also agreed that we shouldn’t allow any other to come in to aggravate the problems of our country.
“It is on this note that it has been agreed by the executive and by us that there should be a forum that should sit with the Attorney General of the Federation so that we can sit and look at all the areas of disagreement and resolve them for the interest of this nation.
“It is therefore proposed that tomorrow there will be a meeting with the committee that will be set here to sit down with the Attorney General to look at those issues and resolve them. It is on this note that the Committee on Finance that the bills have been referred to halt action with public hearing and other issues until we resolve those issues”, he added.
It would be recalled that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on October 3, 2024, forwarded four tax reform bills to the National Assembly for passage but deliberations on the bills had generated serious disagreement between the National Assembly legislators, pitching most of the Northern lawmakers against their Southern counterparts and subsequent suspension of debates on them on Monday.
Earlier, the Northern Governors Forum had vehemently opposed the tax reform bills due to what they termed its unfair provisions.
Following the unabated controversies triggered by the reform bills among fiscal system stakeholders and politicians, the National Economic Council (NEC) advised President Tinubu to withdrawal the bills to allow for further consultations but he did not heed to the advice then.
Revenue