Nigeria is no longer confronted with a mere policy disagreement or a technical legislative error. What the nation now faces is a grave constitutional and institutional crisis arising from credible allegations that laws passed by the National Assembly have been altered after passage and before gazettal, particularly in relation to the so-called tax reform legislation. If left unaddressed, this allegation implicates the integrity of the entire legislative process since 2023 and threatens the very foundation of constitutional governance in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The Allegation That Cannot Be Wished Away

A serving member of the House of Representatives publicly alleged that the tax laws gazetted by the Federal Government materially differ from the versions duly passed by both chambers of the National Assembly. These discrepancies are not cosmetic or clerical. They go to the substance of the law. Nigerians are being asked to comply with a legal instrument that, it is alleged, did not receive legislative approval in the form in which it was published and enforced.

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a Chieftain of the African Democratic Party (ADC) and Waziri Adamawa, alongside other legal and political voices, correctly described this development as forgery and a grave constitutional violation. That characterisation is not political hyperbole; it is firmly anchored in law.

Forgery of Statutes Is Both a Criminal and Constitutional Offence

Under Nigerian criminal jurisprudence, forgery consists of the false making, alteration, or uttering of a document with intent to deceive, particularly where it is presented as authentic. Where the document in question is a statute of the National Assembly, the offence is aggravated by the magnitude of public trust betrayed.

From a constitutional standpoint, legislative power resides exclusively in the National Assembly. Any post-passage alteration of a bill — by bureaucrats, political actors, or any arm of government — amounts to an unlawful usurpation of legislative authority. A law produced through such a process is constitutionally suspect and, at best, voidable; at worst, null.

A Calculated Political Distraction

Following the Nike Lake mass defection of South-East leaders led by Peter Obi, Nigerians have been deliberately drawn into endless and manufactured debates over the presidential ticket of the ADC. This is not accidental. It is a calculated diversion by an agitated leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to shift attention away from wicked, obnoxious, and punitive tax measures being forced on an already economically emasculated population.

Political noise does not legalise an illegitimate law. Distraction does not cure forgery.

An Indictment of Legislative Silence

Most troubling is the deafening silence of the Godswill Akpabio-led National Assembly. The legislature has failed to rise in collective defence of its own constitutional authority. There has been no emergency joint resolution, no categorical demand for criminal investigation, and no public insistence that any perpetrators be exposed and punished.

This silence is not neutrality. It is institutional abdication.
A legislature that tolerates the alteration of its bills after passage ceases to be an independent arm of government and becomes a ceremonial appendage of the executive.

Public Apathy and Governmental Hypocrisy

Equally disturbing is the apparent lack of public outrage. Nigerians appear numbed into resignation, even as a government that hiked petrol prices by over 500% in the name of subsidy removal quietly returned to paying billions in oil subsidies. That same government now seeks to manipulate legislative texts under the guise of tax reform. This is not reform; it is governance by deception.

A DEMAND FOR A COMPREHENSIVE LEGISLATIVE AUDIT

Given the gravity of these allegations, nothing short of a full legislative audit will suffice. I therefore demand:

1. A complete, independent, and transparent clause-by-clause investigation of all bills passed by the National Assembly and gazetted from 2023 to date.

2. A forensic comparison between versions passed by both chambers and versions gazetted and implemented.

3. Public hearings, with certified true copies of original bills produced and examined.

4. Immediate suspension of implementation of any law found to contain post-passage alterations.

5. Criminal prosecution of any individual or group involved in altering, transmitting, or gazetting forged legislative texts, regardless of office or status.

This is not optional. It is the minimum threshold for restoring parliamentary sanctity.

Moral Bankruptcy and State-Sanctioned Predation

A government that plans to collect money from citizens by force in the name of taxation through forged laws is, in moral and practical terms, no different from armed robbers, kidnappers, and other criminal elements engaged in the forcible dispossession of people’s hard-earned resources. The distinction between criminality and governance collapses the moment coercion is backed by illegality.

What makes this even more reprehensible is that Nigerians are subjected to this extraction with little or no protection from the same Federal Government that demands compliance. This is not taxation. It is state-sanctioned predation. This cannot continue.

Opposition Unity Before 2027

Let it be clearly stated: the 2027 ADC primaries will be contested by the living, not the broken and impoverished. We must first save ourselves from the current wicked and mean-hearted APC-led Federal Government before indulging in grandstanding over who leads the onslaught against it. Survival precedes ambition. Bread precedes banners.

All opposition elements — irrespective of party labels or personal aspirations — must come together now to say NO to this public robbery executed through forged tax laws. Any opposition incapable of uniting against economic strangulation and constitutional abuse has forfeited its moral claim to leadership.

Conclusion

A democracy cannot survive forged laws.
A legislature cannot retain legitimacy if it permits its will to be rewritten behind closed doors.
A people cannot claim sovereignty if they submit to laws they did not authorise through their representatives.

Nigeria must decide — now — whether its laws are made in the chambers of parliament or in the shadows of executive manipulation.

History will judge this moment.

Obunike Ohaegbu
National Coordinator, South East Patriots (SEP)
Writes from his village in Anambra State
2nd January 2026