The unbriddled influx of expatriate workers into the country is increasingly becoming worrisome. While it deprives qualified Nigerians opportunities to be gainfully employed, it also promotes capital flight. TOBA AGBOOLA reports that all stakeholders must close rank and address the issue.
The Federal Government, in an effort to ensure that the country keeps pace with the growing global competition in technology and economic development, had made provision for companies to hire expatriates to undertake jobs and responsibilities in areas where Nigerians lack the requisite skills and capacities, while making sure that Nigerians take up jobs they have competencies in.
However, foreign companies have taken advantage of the weak policing and monitoring of this policy to bring as many of their nationals as possible under the guise that they will do the jobs Nigerians lack capacity.
The issue of expatriate quota abuse has become a major challenge to the government over the years. Some of the foreigners are alleged to have come into the country illegally having not gone through immigration processes.
With this problem, experts have said Federal Government’s effort to tackle unemployment may not yield the expected result if a major step is not taken to stop the abuse.
Jobs and career experts said although there is advantage in allowing expatriates to handle some jobs in Nigeria but the undue abuse of that practice is now taking a toll on job seekers.
According to them, foreigners now remain the preferred applicants in the labour market, with many of them now successfully claiming jobs that skilled and unskilled Nigerians should be doing.
They pointed out that expatriate quota abuse is most noticeable in the manufacturing, oil and gas, and other sectors. They lamented that it has crept into other sectors of the nation’s economy, thereby compounding her unemployment woes.
Some of the foreigners take advantage of Nigeria’s porous borders to make their way into the country, while others use official entry points under the guise of being expatriates with skills not available in Nigeria.
The 1963 enabling Act of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) made provision for the employment of foreigners in areas where Nigerians are lacking the required skills. The NIS is empowered to issue business permit and expatriate quota and to monitor the quota granted in order to ensure effective transfer of technology to Nigerians and eventually indigenise the position occupied by the expatriates.
But since 1963 when the law was made, there has been no monitoring and there has been no technology transferred to Nigeria in whatever form.
In fact, the law has been abused as foreigners can now be seen at construction sites, factories, auto-sale outlets, telecommunications and maritime companies doing semi-skilled and even menial jobs that should have been reserved for Nigerians in order to reduce unemployment in the country.
Asians are more in this category of foreigners with questionable entry into the country and abuse of the expatriate quota regime. Many of them can be found in sales outlets as attendants.
Decrying expatriate quota abuse and blaming it largely for the unemployment crisis ravaging the country, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), said it is concerned about the influx of foreigners and the unemployment challenges it produces.
Its Director-General, Mr. Muda Yusuf, said the abuse is worse in the state where foreign workers have taken over jobs Nigerians have adequate competencies to do.
He said the government needed to check the trend because many of the expatriates lacked the requisite qualifications to work in the country, adding it was even worse the foreign workers get higher wages.
The LCCI boss lamented that government efforts at creating jobs would be in vain if the trend is allowed to continue unchecked.
President, National Union of Civil Engineering, Construction, Furniture and Wood Workers (NUCECFWW) Comrade Amechi Asugwuni, said many foreigners, especially Asians and Chinese are in the country under the guise of being experts on the jobs that can be performed by Nigerians, which is against the Nigerian Content Development (NCD) Act.
He said the implementation of the quota is not in tandem with the Nigerian Content Development Act, which states that Nigerians should be considered first in any employment before foreigners or expatriates.
He said the union on several occasions, had urged the NIS and the Ministry of Labour and Productivity to establsih that there is actually the need for expatriates in any company before granting work permit to any foreigner, and that the government should step up efforts to check the influx of expatriates into the country.
He explained that the Nigeria expatriate quota law be respected, while many of the companies should comply with the provisions of the Nigerian Content Development Act, as employment generation is one of the greatest problems facing the country.
He said: “We call on the necessary organs of government to review the process of granting expatriate permit through proper synchronization as well as ensuring that expatriate quota are not abused.
“We also demand for a properly reconstituted inter-ministerial department and agency committee that will co-opt labour unions in recommending and approving expatriate registration.
The Executive Director, Human Resources, 7up Bottling Company Plc, Mr. Femi Mokikan, gave reasons for the increasing number of expatriates in the country.
He said: “I do not think there is any economy in the world that can say it does not use other nationalities. So, that one is not what anybody is talking about. I think the question people usually ask is; why should expatriates be taking on jobs that Nigerians can do? I think our educational system in this country has not helped us too.
“I am speaking as a Nigerian; I am also speaking as an employer of labour that is operating in an environment that is extremely competitive, an environment where technology changes as you blink your eyes. That is why such areas where we used to pride ourselves as being capable as Nigerians, we now have to ask ourselves, how well can Nigerians do this?
“When investors bring in their money, they expect maximum returns. Even though it would cost a bit more, they would rather get an expatriate than a Nigerian who will give minimum returns. I think that is what is happening in the area of expatriates’ employment generally.”
Minister of Labour and Productivity, Emeka Wogu, warned against the abuse of expatriate quota by employers, stating that it has become a source of concern for the government.
Wogu who spoke at a forum organised by the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA), warned that the rights of Nigerian workers must be protected by their employers. He said: “The right of Nigerian workers to rise to any position in the workplace should be guaranteed and encouraged by all and sundry. This should minimise or alleviate the incessant grievances and conflicts in the workplace and should therefore curb the issue of impunity and abuse of rights by the expatriates.”
The minister noted the importance of maintaining industrial harmony in the country curbing the menace of impunity and abuse of rights, adding that most protracted disputes and conflicts in the workplace stem from lack of mutual trust and understanding of shared interest.
To tackle the challenge of expatriate quota abuse, technology transfer and sustainable indigenous skills and capacity development especially in the oil and gas industry, the Federal Government established the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), led by Engr. Ernest Nwapa.
Two months into the establishment of the Board, Nwapa summoned a meeting of chief executive officers and managers of international oil companies (IOCs) to deliberate on how to streamline the guidelines for expatriate quota applications and deployment in the oil and gas industry.
The meeting was a platform where the managers of oil firms were made to understand the guidelines for expatriate quota application and ensure full compliance with the provisions of the Nigerian Content Act.
The meeting highlighted a section of the Act which gives the operator/project promoter room to retain a maximum of five percent of management positions, as may be approved by the Board, as expatriate positions to take care of investors’ interests.
Nwapa also told them that the position of the government was that the guidelines were applicable to international operating companies and their service counterparts and warned that the Board would not take it lightly with any company that continued to use suppliers and contactors who flout these laws by bringing in expatriates without due approvals.
The guidelines issued by NCDMB required that all companies applying for expatriate quotas must provide proof that the positions applied for have been advertised in at least four major Nigerian newspapers and two international newspapers, to establish that there is no qualified Nigerian that can do the job.
Besides, those oil companies were also required to notify the NCDMB of the receipt of applications, planned interview dates, and results of the interviews for each vacancy advertised, as well as proof that no qualified Nigerian had been found fit to occupy the positions. Similar requirements are applicable on the extension of existing expatriate quotas operating companies in the industry with a warning that the Board would hold operators responsible for the failure or otherwise of their contractors to comply, and would not prequalify erring contractors and suppliers to continue providing services in the industry.
Four years after the establishment of NCDMB, the Board through effective implementation of the Nigerian Content Act, has made many Nigerians become owners of midsized exploration and production companies, service companies, and crude marketing firms, with upstream assets outside Nigeria and competing effectively internationally.
In IOCs, Nigerians are taking up challenging positions and responsibilities, which previously reserved for expatriates. Nigerians are handling fabrication and construction projects that were in the past five decades, were awarded to foreign firms and carried out overseas.
To show how worrisome the issue of expatriate influx and their takeover of jobs that Nigerians can competently handle, the members of Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, had about two years ago, directed that all its branches engage their managements over the unprecedented engagement of expatriates under various guises.
The directive was given based on PENGASSAN’s discovery that oil companies have been undermining the Nigeria Content Act, where the number of expatriates working in Nigerian oil and gas sector was increasing by the day instead of decreasing.
It said a report issued in October 2010, showed that expatriates constituted a third of the workforce in the oil and gas sector, which it said had increased by 2012.
PENGASSAN lamented: “When a foreigner comes to a developing country such as Nigeria, he is called an expatriate irrespective of his professional standing, but when a Nigerian goes to Europe and America or a more developed country, he is called an immigrant. Immigrants are poorly paid. But expatriates enjoy unimaginable pay and dreamland privileges, which is very high even by the standard of their home country.”
A report by the NCDMB showed that between January and March this year, out of 2,567 expatriate quota applications, only 1,032 were granted, while 1,113 were rejected.
To determine the exact number of expatriates working in the country, the government is conducting a biometric data capture of all the foreigners working in the country and as at the last count, 1,716 foreign workers have been captured.
The Nigerian Petroleum Exchange Joint Qualification System live database, according to the report, currently has 20,587 individual records; 17 operator portal accounts (with only four active operators); and 5,480 service company portal accounts (with 888 active service companies).
NCDMB said expatriates that work in the nation’s oil and gas industry are now required to undertake biometric registration. This is a requirement for obtaining expatriate quota approvals from the Board. The scheme started in July last year.
In the power sector also, especially in the assets acquired or managed by Chinese, jobs such as tractor-driving, chefs and some menial jobs are done by the Chinese. For example, in Omotosho and Olorunsogo power plants, Chinese outnumber Nigerians and some of them carry out jobs that don’t require formal education and skills.
