By Zakari Mohammed
Nigeria is once again at a dangerous constitutional crossroads. Quiet insertions have reportedly found their way into the new tax laws provisions that neither originated from nor were verified by the National Assembly (NASS). This is not a technical oversight; it is a fundamental breach of constitutional order and democratic consent.
Under Section 4 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), legislative powers especially taxation are vested exclusively in the National Assembly. The executive has no residual authority to alter, expand, or insert provisions into a bill after it has been duly passed. By Section 59, only the exact version passed by NASS and assented to by the President can acquire the force of law. Any other version is ilegal and a nullity. You cannot build something on nothing. 
Beyond legality, however, lies the deeper issue of legitimacy. Tax legitimacy depends on trust, not force. Where citizens do not trust the process, the motives, or the fairness of enforcement, taxation becomes coercive extraction rather than a civic obligation. Democracies tax by consent, not compulsion.
What we are witnessing is a sophisticated form of urban banditry. While rural bandits terrorise with guns, urban bandits operate with pens, policy drafts, circulars, and executive shortcuts. They do not kidnap people; they kidnap due process. They do not attack villages; they ambush institutions. The damage they inflict is silent but destabilizing.
Such conduct violates the doctrine of separation of powers and offends Section 1(1) of the Constitution, which proclaims constitutional supremacy. It also erodes the social contract. Where citizens endure insecurity, unemployment, inflation, and collapsing public services, while being asked to shoulder heavier tax burdens, democratic consent is weakened, if not entirely voided.
This is why taxing survival income is regressive and dangerous. You tax production, not poverty. You tax value creation, not subsistence. In an economy where factories are shutting down, small businesses are gasping for air, and households are barely surviving, taxation becomes socially destabilizing rather than revenue-enhancing.
The timing of this tax push further exposes the problem. It reflects a troubling elite insulation from hardship. Policy urgency in Abuja contrasts sharply with economic trauma in homes and markets across Nigeria. When policy is designed far from pain, it often ignores reality.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu must therefore be reminded that consultation is not weakness; it is democratic wisdom. Policies conceived within narrow executive circle sometimes even influenced by foreign revenue advisers and outsourced consultants—risk undermining fiscal sovereignty and national ownership. Nigeria’s revenue crisis is not citizen-driven; it is governance-driven, rooted in leakages, waste, inefficiency, and accountability failure.
The fuel subsidy episode proves this point. Nigerians were told subsidy removal would free resources for infrastructure, social protection, and economic relief. Yet hardship deepened, costs soared, and accountability remains thin. This history has damaged public trust, making new tax policies harder not easier to justify.
I have also read the statement credited to the Presidential Spokesman, Chief Bayo Onanuga, insisting that there is “no going back” on the January take-off date of the new tax policy. With due respect, this posture misunderstands democracy. This is a policy, not a government. Policies are subject to persuasion, review, and correction. Nigeria is not under military rule.
Unchecked enforcement powers under such tax regimes also raise grave concerns. When enforcement is aggressive without safeguards, it threatens civil liberties, invites abuse, and turns regulatory agencies into instruments of harassment. This deepens citizen alienation and resistance.In this context, the role of the opposition is critical. Opposition is not about protest alone; it is about protection of citizens, of institutions, and of constitutional order. Silence in the face of regressive extraction is complicity.
Nigerians are already overburdened by a high cost of living with no commensurate rise in income or productivity. Progressive taxation must replace regressive extraction. Wealth, excess profits, luxury consumption, and rent-seeking must bear the burden not survival and sweat.Let Nigerians breathe, PBAT.Deadlines can be reviewed. Policies can be paused. Errors can be corrected. Democratic legitimacy is strengthened by listening, not insisting. If this trajectory continues, investor confidence will erode not because Nigeria lacks potential, but because institutions appear compromised.
Nigeria does not need extractive laws; it needs productive policies. It does not need executive cleverness; it needs constitutional discipline. And it certainly does not need urban bandits rewriting laws in the shadows while the rest of us pay the price.
The way forward is clear: reconcile all tax instruments strictly with what NASS passed; reopen genuine consultations; restore trust; and anchor taxation on productivity, equity, and fairness. Anything short of this is governance built on nothing and nothing, history and the Constitution alike, teach us, always collapses.
E-Signed. Hon. Zakari Mohammed Spokesman, 7th Assembly.
