The Chairman of the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), Mr Zacch Adedeji, has asked security agencies to be on alert over planned nationwide protests against the new tax laws, which have officially commenced.
“I’m using this time to call all the security agencies to be on alert,” he said while speaking in an interview on Arise Television on Sunday.
The NRS chief stressed that the reform was for the interest of the poor, but met strong opposition from certain quarters, warning that those pushing anti-tax agitations are unpatriotic elements determined to derail the country’s fiscal reforms.
“Those people you see promoting all this rumour, all this misinformation are those people that are avoiding taxes, that there is no way out for, based on the digitalisation that we brought on board,” he said.
Business Post reports that the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) declared January 14, 2026, as a National Day of Action to protest the planned implementation of the controversial tax reform laws, accusing the federal government of ignoring public concerns and constitutional processes.
Mr Adedeji said tax reform was a clear campaign promise of President Bola Tinubu and a necessary response to what he described as a fragmented tax system that could not sustain the level of development the President envisaged.
“Tax reform is one of the promises made by Mr President from his inaugural speech,” he said. “From the beginning, he made it his point of duty that we need to start early to reform the tax system, which is the real foundation for any sustainable economy in the world.”
He recalled that the President set up a committee headed by Mr Taiwo Oyedele, which, according to him, spent a year consulting stakeholders and preparing recommendations that were then processed by the National Assembly through public hearings and regional engagements before the President assented to the bill in June 2024.
Speaking on the recent issues around the gazetted version of the Nigeria Tax Administration and Other Matters Act differed, Mr Adedeji dismissed the allegations as baseless.
“No, like I said earlier, I don’t want to delve into those rumours,” he said. “For example, all these comparisons that you are mentioning now, honestly, I don’t know where you find them because nobody, except the National Assembly, has the right to the vote book. They are the ones to give us the gazetted law as passed, which… they’ve released… as passed, which is the only thing we have.”
He insisted that the only document relevant to the NRS is the gazetted Act transmitted by the legislature.
“I don’t even need to see the harmonised bill. I don’t need to see any of those things,” he said. “The only thing I need to see is the gazetted bill, which they have given to me. All these processes are internal processes of the National Assembly, which is purely a separation of powers.”
Mr Adedeji notes that the tax authorities had no role in altering any legislation and said the executive had “no place in the law” to tamper with bills passed by parliament.
He also clarified that while the law took effect from June, some rate changes were delayed to give companies time to adjust.