*456 foreigners in 41 companies in the sector doing jobs Nigerians can do

*4 such companies account for 186 expatriates

*Fruit juice firm holds expatriates in excess of 65; flour miller 43; another fruit juice firm 45 excess

*Persistent influx of expatriates is in flagrant disregard to Presidential Executive Order 5 — Workers’ union

By Victor Ahiuma-Young


Industrial unrest is looming in the Food and Beverages sector of the nation’s economy over alleged expatriate quota abuse by multi-nationals and other major companies in the industry.

Already, organised labour has petitioned the Federal Government through the Ministry of Labour and Employment, accusing a major multi-national in the sector of flagrant abuse of expatriate quota.

Vanguard’s investigations revealed that there are no fewer than 456 foreigners in 41 companies in the sector doing jobs Nigerians can conveniently do, with four of such companies accounting for 186 expatriates.

Two of such companies, according to the labour leaders, are a fruit juice processing company based in Lagos and a flour milling giant. The fruit juice firm is said to be holding expatriates in excess of 65 while the flour miller holds 43.

Another beverage (fruit juice) company in a neighbouring state is said to be holding 45 excess expatriates.

According to labour sources, two major bottling companies have 24 excess expatriates, while another based in Ogun State has 11 foreigners in the company without compliance with Nigeria’s expatriate quota rules.

In the beverages sub-sector, four Lagos-based companies have 65, 16, five and four foreigners outside their expatriate quota, while six companies based in Ogun State, have 45, 13, six, six, five, three and three excess expatriates respectively.

Also, two companies in the list (manufacturing biscuits) in Lagos, have 15 and nine foreigners working for them outside their expatriate quota while a company based in Ibadan, Oyo State has no fewer than 30 of such workers.

Similarly, in the confectionery industry, the labour report indicated that two Ibadan, Oyo State-based companies have 14 and five excess expatriates in their establishments.

The labour source also said a noodles manufacturing company in Ogun State, has no fewer than 21 excess expatriates working in the firm.

Four other companies in the sector have two foreigners each, three in Ibadan, Oyo State, have two expatriates each, while three others also in Ibadan, have one each above their quotas.


‘We need expatriates, but…’

Lamenting the situation, a labour leader who spoke to Vanguard on condition of anonymity, said, “With the level of our development, we cannot say we do not need expatriates. We need them in areas where we do not have local expertise. But our grouse is the abuse.

“We have situations where just one expatriate is required but the company comes along with 20 or more who, in every sense of it, are not experts, but mere tools to fight unemployment in their countries, siphon money out of our country and so on.

“In other words, they are coming to take up the few available jobs thousands of Nigerians are struggling for. They have no expertise to impact on or give to Nigerians. In fact, in most cases, it is Nigerians that end up training them.

“Yet they are paid in dollars with each of them receiving Naira equivalent that can employ 10 or more Nigerians.

“The rule guiding expatriate is clear; that is, people with the technical competence not available in Nigeria so that they can come in and train Nigerians for about two or three years.

‘‘After this period, such expatriate will return to his or her country. But what we have today is a situation where they come, spend three years, and at the expiration of their permits, the permits are renewed through whatever means.

“Before you realise it, they become permanent expatriates. In some cases, instead of the expatriate going back, with the connivance of dubious officials and agencies, the expatriate will move from one organisation to another and eventually, before you know it, he or she is given permanent residence permit.

“This is unacceptable to us. We need expatriates, but they must follow due process and comply with rules of engagement.

‘‘Anywhere the Indians, the Lebanese, and generally, the Asians operate, they cause trouble. They are the people causing problem in the industry. They are the ones giving us the most problems in this area.

“We go to our National Joint Industrial Negotiating Council, we do not have large percentage of representation because of these Asians.

“We have told the employers body to call their members to order, especially the Indians. If you go into these companies controlled by Indians you will see what they are using Nigerians to do. It is nothing short of modern slavery.”


Unions’ angst

Organised Labour in the sector, under the aegis of the National Union of Foods, Beverages and Tobacco Employees, NUFBTE, and its Food, Beverage and Tobacco Senior Staff Association, FOBTOB, counterpart, are not taking the perceived abuse lightly.

President of FOBTOB, Jimoh Oyibo, while decrying the level of expatriate quota abuse in the sector, said:

“We are seriously disturbed by the increase in the number that has flooded the companies in our industry. This is disheartening and unacceptable to us. This attitude alone has led to continuous taking over of jobs that are exclusive rights of indigenous workers.

“Although, we have tackled the menace headlong in the past and I am using this medium to state that we will continue the struggle to save our jobs.”

Speaking to Vanguard, the Acting General Secretary of NUFBTE, Mike Olarewaju, said, “Our union views this practice of abusing expatriate quota as a deliberate sabotage to Nigerian economy as well as a subtle channel for capital flight.

“In the same vein, it is a threat to job dignity and employment opportunities of Nigerians. ‘‘Consequently, our union outrightly condemns this practice.

“The so-called expatriates are being engaged in various departments including, Production, Supply Chain, Sales, Engineering, Quality Assurance and Stores among others,

‘‘Our Union has made several reports and protests to relevant ministries and other statutory bodies.”

The union, Vanguard gathered, has decided to tackle the abuse on company-to-company basis, and is presently battling a soft drink company, over alleged “persistent influx of expatriate and flagrant disregard to Presidential Executive Order 5”.

In a petition addressed to the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, NUFBTE through its Acting General Secretary, Mike Olarewaju, among others, stated: “Further to our letters on the above subject particularly reference to our letters dated 10th September,2017, 3rd October, 2017 and 17th January, 2020 respectively.

“It is extremely sad and depressing to observe that the management of this company (name witheld) has continuously flouted with impunity the tenets of our previous mutual understanding by pervading deliberate acts of disobedience to the intents and contents of the letters under reference which undoubtedly amounts to unconscionable violation of the presidential executive order “5” with impunity.

“Despite the unambiguous positions of our union as duly enunciated in our previous letters and meetings where your management promised to checkmate the trend, however, it is evidently clear that your management has continued unabatedly to engage in glaring acts of degradation and subjugation of Nigerians working in the company.

“Consequently, our union has resolved to frontally checkmate this undesirable practice of unfair labour practice of perpetuating and relegating Nigerians to second class citizens in Nigeria by depriving them from occupying some management positions while at the same time your management provocatively reserves the positions exclusively for non- Nigerians.

“Without mincing words, this oppressive practice is despicable, condemnable, provocative and outrightly unacceptable.”

NUFBTE added that it expects the management of the soft drinks company to act wisely to save the emerging situation from altering the existing industrial harmony.”


Ministry steps in

Vanguard found that but for the intervention by the appropriate ministry, which has already summoned the management of the soft drinks company and asked it to respond to the petition among others, NUFBTE would have started an industrial action.

According to a labour source, the Ministry has directed the company to provide detailed list of foreigners or expatriates working in the company and their educational qualifications.

Efforts to speak with the management of the company on the development were unsuccessful.

A senior management personnel who volunteered information on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the issue is before the Ministry of Labour and Employment and the company will only respond to the ministry’s query for now.

In the same vein, all attempts to speak with the leaders of the Association of Food, Beverage and Tobacco Employers, AFBTE, the umbrella body for employers in the sector, hit a brick wall.

An official of the association, however, told Vanguard that the “issue of expatriates are handled by the individual companies. The employers’ body has no role to play.”

Equally, efforts to speak with the officials of the Ministry of Interior were rebuffed.

Neither questions sent to one of the aides of the Minister after an initial telephone contact on October 28, has been responded to nor several calls since then till the press time.

https://www.vanguardngr.com/2021/12/tension-in-foods-drinks-sector-over-expatriate-quota-abuse/

‘‘Anywhere the Indians, the Lebanese, and generally, the Asians operate, they cause trouble. They are the people causing problem in the industry. They are the ones giving us the most problems in this area"
.

Lamenting the situation, a labour leader who spoke to Vanguard on condition of anonymity, said, “With the level of our development, we cannot say we do not need expatriates. We need them in areas where we do not have local expertise. But our grouse is the abuse.


this people are clowns they easily forget that the Indians, the Lebanese, and Chinese are the driving force of industrilasation in almost all the third world county nigeria inclusive
.
how many Nigerians rich enough and yet has the knowledge of industrialisation less than 0.000001%
most reach Nigerians prefer investing their wealth ill gotten wealth giving birth to thousand of children (Abubakar Malami SAN (born 17 April 1967), is a Nigerian lawyer and politician who since 2015 is serving as Minister for Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation with 39 children and no investment)
.

go up north and see the thousand of children being birthed daily with no industries for them to work

.

Damnnn niggarrrr
Isoright

Nor be today them begin abuse that expatriate quota na

Even in other sectors like power and all those electrical generating plants....if you see the numbers of expatriate ehnnn...you will be shocked

Anyway....I don't blame them sha...most of our electrical engineers are too dull....

The national integrated power project in my village in Edo state na so so expatriate dominate am....I worked with them for one year..the whole place is filled with Indian, Thailand, Pakistan and Malaysian

Dangote Cement industry comes to mind.....
The Cement factory at Ibese has more than 150 Indians doing what Nigerians can do.
Funny thing is that they pay these so called expatriates in dollars and pay Nigerians doing same jobs and at same level in Naira.

Imagine an Indian doing same job being paid 3000USD monthly whereas their Nigerian staff are receiving 90,000 as basic salary

Bunch of Lunatics

Okay

Una no wan called the company names because of advert

Inferiority complex is killing Africa

Please we need expatriates. Just like Asians are here doing jobs Nigerians can do, Nigerians are in the USA and Europe enjoying jobs their people can also do. We should stop crying wolf all the time. If only our people can invest big in Nigeria, then they can choose to favour local experts over professionals.

But the expatriate issue is being abused by the Indians I must say. In the companies they run, 90% of the top management position are run by their people, the rest is by Nigerians. Too uneven.

Wahala no dey finish for the country people

Na Chi be de fruit juice business.

Full of Indians.

I hope they all get flushed out.

Undocumented Chinese wey full lekki, ilesa and zamfara doing illegal gold-mining and all nko?

The lebanese and Indians at least register a business legally but may abuse the quota and bring in all their generations but you see the chinese ehn!

The chinese that buhari is hobnobbing with and collecting what seems like free money will be his nemesis.

Bridge collapse in china, may be coming soon to Nigeria!

Buy fake get fake!!

This people bring nothing but problems upon anywhere they step foot on.

I heard that in Dangote refinery, there are up to 20,000 Indian workers,

Sha in the construction company I work (Lagos -kano) Railway project, gatemen and cleaners are all chinese, welders, carpenters and so on, there are more than a thousand but hide thier numbers and 99% are not documented, they all arrive Nigeria by ship

Nor be so Indians take spoil MTN call centre work as well? I fucking HATE 'em

Ok

Omo

It's always a thing to blame foreigners working in your country but they always provide more jobs than they take generally. We have way too many poor people to be worried about the very few jobs these foreigners take. Driving foreigners away from jobs has never worked out well for any African country. Its only always popular cus the indigenes think they will take over their jobs. Kinda hope pursuing igbo from some areas in the north only made those areas poorer.

The north is busy eyeing the resources in the south

We are coming for them

Where there is no technological transfer the people suffer for a very long time

Indians worse...they still carry olosho join body...

Truth be told the government is not talking about expatriate quota because they are interested in the level of unemployment .They are lamenting about the number of expatriates in such organisations because of the money they get from the company's.

When I paid the expatriate quota for our expatriates earlier in the year,I paid well over a million naira for each of them.(cost of expatriate quota is determined by dollar rate).

Some companies hide the number of expatriates they have and only pay for a fraction of their expatriates .Even when immigration comes for inspection at their premises they might not even be allowed access to the premises on time until they have hidden the expatriates they want to hide.

If we dont have a proper data base in this country we are just wasting our time.

Until it's easier for a Nigerian sme to set-up and run its business and employ Nigerians with great labour benefits, all these abuse by expatriates will continue.

we would surely scale through it


Anyway, Agriculture is life

please before you sow the seed of xenophobia remember that nigeria also have a high number of people in diaspora and we hold these people in high esteem because they send us dollars.

Na everywhere, e plenty for maritime industry.....

A foreign Captain on a PSV or AHTS DP2 vessel in Nigeria earns about 4-5 Million Naira per month

A Nigerian Captain with the same capacity earns less than 2 Million Naira per month

We don complain tire to NIMASA, but they are the cause of everything.... They keep handing over waivers to companies to bring in foreigners to work

Imagine NPA tugs in Lagos been handled by foreigners.... It's a BIG SHAME

Neddstark:
Please we need expatriates. Just like Asians are here doing jobs Nigerians can do, Nigerians are in the USA and Europe enjoying jobs their people can also do. We should stop crying wolf all the time. If only our people can invest big in Nigeria, then they can choose to favour local experts over professionals.

But the expatriate issue is being abused by the Indians I must say. In the companies they run, 90% of the top management position are run by their people, the rest is by Nigerians. Too uneven.

Speaking from both sides of the mouth