A society does not unravel only when guns drown out laws. It also weakens when citizens begin to suspect that the text meant to govern them can be quietly adjusted after the ceremony has ended. Once a law loses credibility, enforcement becomes a contest of power rather than a discipline of legitimacy. Compliance turns into a gamble, not a civic duty. That is the unsettling shadow now hanging over Nigeria’s 2025 tax reform project—an agenda promoted as economic renewal but increasingly threatened by a credibility crisis that strikes at the heart of constitutional order.