…Says NASS, FG held 39 meetings before passage of Tax Reform Bills, 2024
...Rejects use of the parliament to grandstand over national issues
Leader of the Senate, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele on Sunday opposed key opposition parties in the country for labelling the National Assembly a rubber-stamp parliament without any justification or proof.
Bamidele, currently representing Ekiti Central, said if the National Assembly was actually a rubber-stamp, it could not have held over 39 meetings with the executive arm to trash out all grey areas in the Tax Reform Bills, 2024 before they were eventually passed.
These were revealed in a statement released by the Directorate of Media and Public Affairs, Office of the Leader of the Senate on Sunday, x-raying diverse interventions that the National Assembly had taken in the overriding public interest.
The National Assembly had, at its inauguration on the 13th June 2023, embraced strategic engagement and partnership to address thorny national issues in the pursuit of the country’s vital and peripheral interests.
Despite its non-adversarial approach to the legislative business, the parliament has been under sustained public criticisms with leading opposition parties, especially the Peoples Democracy Party, Labour Party and New Nigeria Peoples Party describing it as a rubber-stamp legislative institution.
Amid the public criticisms, Bamidele differed with the opposition parties that the National Assembly was still a rubber stamp to the executive, noting that the claim had no justification.
Bamidele first cited the case of the Tax Reform Bills, 2024, which he said, were initiated in November 2024, but finally scaled through legislative scrutiny six months after they were laid before the National Assembly.
He, thus, argued: “If we are actually a rubber-stamp parliamentary institution as most opposition political parties have claimed, the bills would have been passed within one week or two weeks after they were laid before us.
“In the process of passing the bills, both executive and legislative arms held over 39 engagements to trash grey areas in the Tax Reform Bills, 2024 before both chambers of the National Assembly eventually passed the bills.
“During this period, the engagements involved diverse interests and stakeholders across the federation. The tax reform bills could have been rushed within one or two weeks. But it took us six months to secure input from all critical stakeholders – civil society organisations, professional bodies, religious leaders and leaders of thoughts.
“The process includes all behind-the-scenes efforts, closed door meetings and subtle disagreements that took place between the legislature and the executive before their passage. We also organised public hearings just to accommodate inputs from diverse interests.
“We extended our engagements to all captains of industries to enable us pass the tax reform bills that will stand the test of time; meet the needs of our people and ensure the overriding public interest in the exercise of our constitutional mandates.
“At the end of it, we found a way of resolving all issues around the tax reform bills in the overriding public interest. But people do not know all the efforts and sacrifices we made to ensure the effective delivery of public goods. They were only eager to label us a rubber stamp when the bills came from the executive.”
Rather than grandstanding on the floors, Bamidele explained that the National Assembly at different times invited the Executive for engagement with a view to thrashing out grey areas in the bills.
He, also, cited the case of the 2025 Appropriation Act, which according to him, was laid before the joint session of the National Assembly on Wednesday, 18th December 2024, but passed on February 13, 2025.
He explained that if the National Assembly was actually a rubber stamp, it could have hastened the passage of the 2025 Appropriation Bills by the end of the 2024 fiscal year in order to sustain the January to December budget cycle, which had become the country’s practice in recent times.
: “We did not give the budget back to the executive until February 2025. We did a lot of due diligence. Every committee of the National Assembly duly engaged heads of agencies to properly scrutinise the budget also in the overriding public interest.
“We are working in the interest of the people. We are always taking into consideration the need to ensure good governance in all our undertakings and the need to use legislative frameworks to promote good governance in the federation,” Bamidele explained.
