Tax reforms: Nigerian governors cancelled meetings with us four times — Oyedele

The Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, has revealed how the Nigeria Governors’ Forum cancelled meetings with his team four times.

This comes as he decries why the governors are claiming not to have been carried along in the formation of the bills.

Oyedele made this statement in a recent interview with Arise TV regarding the four controversial tax reform bills.

He noted that the majority of Nigeria’s governors did not have time to meet with the Presidential Tax Reforms Committee.

According to him, when the NGF finally met with his team after several cancellations, they were only given 15 minutes to discuss the tax reforms.

He stated that the committee had met with finance ministers of states and state internal revenue services across Nigeria, yet governors claimed they had not been consulted.

“We are extensively against the governors. I went to the governors’ forum, we wrote, and wanted to meet with six governors—one from each of the six political zones. Up to this moment, the only governor we have been able to meet is the governor of Lagos State. The other governor who is willing to welcome us is from Kaduna State. Other governors did not have time for us.

“The governors’ forum themselves invited us four times and cancelled four times. The fifth time we were kept waiting until 1:30 a.m. By the time they had time for us, they said we had 15 minutes. We had a half-day engagement with the finance commissioners across Nigeria. We had more than four engagements with the heads of internal revenue services across Nigeria,” he stated.

This comes amid the ongoing controversy surrounding the four tax bills—the Nigeria Tax Bill 2024, the Tax Administration Bill, the Nigeria Revenue Service Establishment Bill, and the Joint Revenue Board Establishment Bill—after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu transmitted them to the National Assembly in October 2024.

Lawmakers, the National Economic Council, and the Northern Governors’ Forum had rejected the tax bills.

However, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in his first Presidential Media Chat last year, noted that the bills were necessary to restructure the Nigerian economy.

Meanwhile, Oyedele, in an interview with Channels Television, said that the Federal Government is ready to make a compromise on the Value Added Tax (VAT) sharing formula.

DAILY POST reports that Northern Governors opposed the derivation principle of VAT and its removal from the Concurrent List to the Exclusive List, as proposed in the bills.

Daily Post