At a time other countries are raising their borders to curtail the influx of foreign personnel to the detriment of locals, it is unfortunate that the Nigerian government continues to fail in this elementary test of responsibility to its citizens. We refer to a report by The Telegraph on expatriate quota racket by some international oil companies (IOCs).The figures, said to have been supplied by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) revealed that the agency, which monitors expatriates’ inflow was flooded with 5,159 expatriate quota applications within 11 months.
Of particular interest however is the allegation by a management staff of NCDMB that expatriate quota applications by oil firms actually surged during the period in which Nigerians were losing jobs due to rightsizing by IOCs. “The expatriate quota racket is real and it has been denying competent Nigerians jobs and the country multi-million dollars annually”, the paper quoted the unnamed NCDMB staff as saying.
We have no reason to doubt the statement, particularly when a similar concern was raised by no less a personality than the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, sometime last year. Emerging from a parley with the oil industry unions – the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria and some contractors in the oil and gas sector, the minister, while expressing his misgivings on the situation hinted of his ministry’s resolve to “check the abuse of the nation’s immigration/labour laws” while pledging that “the displacement of qualified Nigerians by foreigners will soon become a thing of the past”. Like similar statements made in the past, it remains to be seen what the minister intends to do.
To add its weighty voice to the subject, the House of Representatives only last month mandated its committee on interior to investigate the abuse of expatriate quota due to alleged connivance of Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) officers with some foreign companies. It gave the committee four weeks to report back to the House for further action.
We consider the situation as serious as to be deemed a national security issue – particularly so at a time of record youth unemployment and in the age of terrorism. From a practice that was almost exclusively restricted to the oil and gas sector, we have seen foreigners venture into construction labour, to domestic services such as housekeeping and driving and other non-specialist services in which there is a surfeit of local skills. The result is to further crowd out more Nigerians out of the labour market – at a time of record unemployment.
Like other facets of the nation’s life, the situation is best put to the factor of corruption. The fact is – nothing is inherently wrong with the regime of expatriate quota. Even more advanced countries have been known to institute such policies to bridge the gaps where local expertise are found to be in short supply. What most countries do is enshrine clauses to ensure speedy transfer of technology. In our case, we have an understudy clause built into the expatriate policy which provides for two Nigerians to understudy an expatriate, all in the bid to promote seamless transfer of technology. This, unfortunately, is what foreign companies with active connivance of NIS and other agencies prefer to observe in the breach.
We welcome the House of Representatives’ probe just as we hope that it will help shed light on the extent of the abuses, particularly by government agencies. The least the NIS can do at this time is come up with a credible data on foreigners and their residency status. As for the labour unions – the group most affected by these abuses – it seems about time they assumed the vanguard of the fight against the abuse of the expatriate quota.
