The Chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee, Taiwo Oyedele, has dismissed reports claiming that he described the tax regulation currently in circulation as fake, saying his comments were taken out of context.
Oyedele made the clarification on Wednesday during an appearance on Arise Television’s Morning Show, following controversy over alleged alterations to key provisions of the tax law.
He explained that the misunderstanding arose from a media interview in which a reporter compared sections of the law published in the official Gazette with a harmonised version attributed to the National Assembly and asked whether the differences amounted to alterations.
Oyedele said that prior to the interview, he had encountered reports alleging that several sections of the law had been substantially altered, with the impression that the claims emanated from a House of Representatives committee said to be probing the matter.
According to him, doubts were raised after he noticed that one of the cited sections did not exist in the Gazette. He added that a lawmaker he contacted, who was reportedly part of the investigating committee, told him that the committee had not met on the issue.
He said: “So first thing is in your opening comments. And I’ve seen that quite a bit in the past couple of days, that I said that the regulation in circulation is fake. So that’s not what I said, what I said, because I was also granting an interview, and the reporter displayed a section of the law in the Gazette and then the similar session in quotes in the harmonized version by the National Assembly, and was asking me whether that was indeed an alteration.
“Before then, I’d seen this report about all these sections that they claim were altered substantially, and the report was giving the impression that this was a report of the House of Representative committee investigating the matter.
“So I saw one of the sections which I’m going to show you now, and I knew that was not in the Gazette, and they claim it was in the case there, so I called one of the lawmakers in the committee, and I said, just to clarify to you, you know, this your report, you reference something that does not exist. And the guy said they haven’t even met.
“So apparently, some people decided to write what alterations they thought were made, and it didn’t come from the committee investigating it. Some people have done graphic design on top of it. So my response was, I don’t think that it would be productive to start discussing alleged alterations that we don’t know where it came from, and certainly not from the House committee. So and then some people reported it as me saying that the Gazette in circulation was fake. That’s not what I said.”