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Nigeria sets annual fees for foreign workers in new scheme
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has launched the Expatriate Employment Levy to enhance domestic skills and technology, aiming to balance employment opportunities between Nigerians and expatriates.
The scheme aims to close wage gaps and increase employment opportunities for qualified Nigerians in foreign companies. President Tinubu emphasised that the levy should not hinder foreign investment but rather support revenue generation, naturalisation, and indigenisation, Punch NG reports.
“I declare my support for the Expatriate Employment Levy scheme, and I will continue to encourage the operators, practitioners of immigration matters, and expatriate quotas, but I emphasise: do not use it as a bottleneck; do not use it as an obstacle to frustrate potential investors,” the Nigerian president said
Special Advisor on Media and Publicity to the president, Ajuri Ngelale, made this known in a statement titled, ‘President Tinubu advocates greater home-grown skill retention and domestication of technologies as the pursuit of foreign direct investment intensifies.’
“We seek a greater balancing of employment opportunities between Nigerians and expatriates and the closure of the wage gap between expatriates and the Nigerian labour force by making it more attractive to hire Nigerians. There will be clear lines of implementation and effective acceleration of aims and objectives of this programme. officials in charge of immigration matters, expatriate quotas, and relevant stakeholders have to be effectively guided to make Nigeria the focus of the objective of this EEL. Therefore, it is my honour to launch the handbook of the Expatriate Employment Levy,” Tinubu said.
The Minister of Interior of the West African nation, Bunmi Tunji-Ojo, further explained the reason behind the policy and revealed that the Expatriate Employment Levy (EEL) project will be executed through a public-private partnership involving the federal government of Nigeria, the Nigeria Immigration Service as the implementing agency, and technical partner EEL Projects Limited.
The project’s alignment with the eight-point agenda of President Bola Tinubu, focuses on job security and economic growth, according to Tunji-Ojo. The initiative aims to foster technology domestication and ensure that expatriates are hired for roles where no Nigerian possesses the required skills.
