By Kingston Magare 27.12.2025
As President Bola Tinubu’s tax reforms are set to kick in January 1, 2026, an Islamic scholar Sheikh Abubakar Akali Zaria said northerns would be mobilised to resist the new tax regime.
He also added that any lawmaker from the north who backed the tax reforms would be beaten up.
Sheikh Akali who was speaking in a trending online video said so far Tinubu’s economic policies have not benefited ordinary Nigerians, therefore implementing more anti-people policy would be resisted.
“We are waiting to see who will come and make us pay these taxes,” Sheikh Akali stated.
“By Allah, I am saying with a loud voice. Any senator or member of the House of Representatives who is supporting this new tax law will be dealt with once you are back home.
“And to you senators and representatives, I am congratulating you guys, because you will be beaten up. And when they say they removed subsidy, whose father did it help? So, we don’t have any problem with anybody except those who signed that tax reform into law,” the cleric maintained.
Controversies have continued to trail the President Bola Tinubu’s new tax reforms since Abdussamad Dasuki, a House of Representatives member from Sokoto, drew his colleagues’ attention to alleged discrepancies between the tax reforms approved by the House and the version assented into law.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the presidential committee on fiscal policy and tax reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, insisted the federal government will proceed with the implementation of the signed tax reforms as scheduled, despite widespread criticism.
“The plan to commence the new law, the two remaining new laws on the first of January 2026, will go ahead as planned, on schedule, because these reforms are designed to provide relief to the Nigerian people,” Mr Oyedele said on Friday.