The Senate has set up a committee to review the controversial Tax Reform Bills that are before the National Assembly. The committee will meet with the Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, to address grey areas in the bills and revert to Senate before public hearing.
The Deputy Senate President Barau Jibrin disclosed this during plenary on Wednesday.
Barau, who presided over the session, said that the executive arm of the government agreed with the Senate that there is need to resolve all the issues causing disagreements in the bills.
Barau stated thus:
“We decided to put politics, ethnicity, regionalism aside to sit among ourselves in order to find a way forward in respect to issues affecting the tax reform bills. It is on this note that we extended our view to the executive arm of government, and it was agreed that there should be a forum to sit down to look at the areas that are creating disagreements in order to resolve them so that the entire country will remain united in our efforts to solve our problems.
“Before the introduction of these bills, we know we have been faced with several problems; insecurity that we and the president have been trying to solve, issues about our economy which is in line with global economic problems. And we also agreed that we shouldn’t allow any other to come in to aggravate the problems of our country.
“It is on this note that it has been agreed by the executive and by us that there should be a forum that should sit with the Attorney General of the Federation so that we can sit and look at all the areas of disagreement and resolve them for the interest of this nation.
“It is therefore proposed that tomorrow there will be a meeting with the committee that will be set here to sit down with the Attorney General to look at those issues and resolve them. It is on this note that the Committee on Finance that the bills have been referred to halt action with public hearing and other issues until we resolve those issues.”