Nigeria: Foreign Worker Regulations Revised

The Nigerian Ministry of Interior has recently published a revised handbook with guidelines on how employers should regulate their foreign workers. According to the revised rules, a foreign company that is fully owned by Nigerian nationals or jointly by foreign nationals, conducting business in Nigeria, must have a minimum capital of NGN 100 million when applying for a business permit (up from NGN 10 million as previously published in the last edition of the handbook); the validity period for foreign employees has been reduced to three years with the possibility of renewal once every two years within a seven-year period, instead of the previous ten-year validity period (foreign companies may additionally extend their foreign employees’ employment contract for one additional year to complete a project); a new rule requiring each employer to hire two Nigerian employees with a tertiary qualification or a relevant training certificate for every one foreign national employed, to learn a foreign national’s duties; and lastly, a new rule requiring a foreign company to include all their foreign employees’ National Identification Numbers when submitting monthly returns.