Chairman of the House Minority Caucus Ad-hoc Committee, Afam Ogene, has asserted that the alteration in the gazetted copy of the new tax law was the result of executive rascality.
Naijaonpoint reports that Ogene made this remark on Friday while fielding questions during an interview on Arise Television.
According to him, the overzealousness of some officials on the executive side is easily the cause of the discrepancies in the new tax law.
He said, “In parliamentary practice, you are given 7 or 14 days right to do a report, and we are asked to do this within seven days. So in seven days, if it is not enough for you, you do an interim report to the body that sets you up justifying why you should be given further time to do more detailed work.
“So what we have done so far is to identify that, yes, these issues exist, but there is the need to find out who did what, whether individuals or corporate entities.
“You can easily point to overzealousness by some officials on the executive side, which, in summary, you can tag executive rascality because a lot of times, people think that when you bring executive bills, the bills should return to you as was sent.
“I don’t want to use rubber stamp, but it cannot be garbage in, garbage out, and that is why 360 of us sit in that Assembly.
“There are processes to lawmaking, first reading, second reading, then public hearings, and then it comes back to the committee of the whole and then there is harmonization between the House and the Senate, and then the clerk of National Assembly prepares a clean copy, which is sent to the President, and in doing so, ensuring that it was what was passed by the National Assembly.”