By Hon. Kenneth Chibuogwu Gbandi
In my last op-ed, reiterated again during my recent media engagements on Quest FM & TV, Ugbolu, and DBS Asaba, both in Delta State, I warned that Renewed Hope had dangerously transformed into Renewed Fear: a fear that justice in Nigeria is no longer anchored on law, fairness, or democratic accountability, but on loyalty to power and silent submission to impunity. Today, that fear has grown deeper and more justified.
What is being presented to Nigerians as tax reform increasingly appears to be something far more troubling, the quiet weaponization of taxation. In any functioning democracy, reform must rest on transparency, legislative integrity, and the consent of the governed. What we are witnessing instead raises grave questions about process, legality, and intent.
Reports now circulating widely suggest that Nigeria’s tax legislation, after passage by the National Assembly, may have been materially altered. These alleged post-legislative insertions reportedly deny ordinary Nigerians the right to challenge unjust tax assessments while granting tax authorities sweeping coercive powers without clear legislative consent. Included among these powers are alleged rights of arrest, seizure of property without court orders, and enforcement mechanisms that bypass judicial oversight. If true, this is not an administrative error; it is an assault on the rule of law and the very foundations of democratic governance.
The more disturbing question is not only whether this occurred, but how a nation responds when confronted with such allegations. How have we become so conditioned to abuse that even claims of illegal legislative alterations fail to provoke widespread outrage? Are Nigerians now so numbed by years of impunity that nothing shocks us anymore?
This dangerous national fatigue is perhaps our greatest vulnerability. Nigerians have become excessively elastic, stretching endlessly to accommodate bad governance rather than resisting it. In societies where civic consciousness remains alive, any reform that blocks citizens from seeking legal redress, inflates compliance costs for already struggling businesses, and imposes heavier burdens during the worst economic hardship in a generation would immediately ignite public resistance. Streets would fill, courtrooms would be engaged, and digital spaces would overflow with protest. In Nigeria, silence too often follows shock.
This so-called reform arrives at a moment when millions of Nigerians are battling runaway inflation, collapsing purchasing power, business closures, and job losses. To tighten the fiscal noose without fairness, transparency, or judicial safeguards is not reform, it is economic punishment masquerading as policy. Taxation should be a tool for shared national development, not a blunt instrument of coercion against a suffering population.
Even more troubling is the apparent extension of this framework to Nigerians in the Diaspora. Once again, the Diaspora is treated primarily as a revenue stream rather than as a constituency deserving representation, participation, and oversight. Our remittances are celebrated, yet our political voices are sidelined. Our contributions are welcomed, but our rights are treated as negotiable. This contradiction is unjust and ultimately unsustainable.
Democracy cannot survive where citizens are denied the right to challenge state power. No government that fears accountability can credibly claim to be reformist, and no nation can tax its way to prosperity while suffocating its productive class and insulating authority from scrutiny.
In response, I will be mobilizing, in collaboration with ADC-DN, a global online petition to challenge this injustice and to demand transparency, legislative integrity, and the restoration of citizens’ rights within Nigeria’s tax framework. This effort is intended to provide Nigerians at home and abroad with a lawful, collective platform to insist that reform must serve the people, not silence them.
I call on Nigerians everywhere, particularly those in the Diaspora to set aside political, ethnic, and ideological differences and unite against this creeping normalization of impunity. This moment transcends party lines. It speaks to whether we still believe in accountability, fairness, and the fundamental principle that government exists to serve the people, not to subdue them.
History teaches us that tyranny rarely announces itself loudly. It settles quietly when citizens grow tired of resisting. Nigeria must decide whether it will continue to endlessly adapt to bad governance or finally draw a line and say enough.
Hon. (Dr.) Gbandi is the longest-serving European Continental Chairman and a member of the Board of Trustees of NIDOE Europe. He served as Coordinating Chairman of NIDO Worldwide, was a member of the Hamburg Senate Foreigners’ Advisory Council during the 2011 legislative period, and was the Senatorial candidate for Delta North in 2023. He is a chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC)
