The Federal Government has threatened to sanction companies that fail to comply with the law guiding the employment of qualified Nigerians as understudies for expatriates.
Through the Special Ministerial Task Force on Monitoring and Enforcement of Nigerian Expatriate Business Permit and Expatriate Quota Administration, the government said it had directed companies in the country to submit the Tax Identification Numbers, National Identification Numbers (NIN), phone numbers and email addresses of Nigerians understudying expatriates in their firms.
A statement on Sunday in Osogbo, the Osun State capital, by the task force chairman, Bola Ilori, said the decision followed a meeting with representatives of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), other professional bodies and officials of Ministry of Interior.
The statement reads: “Every company must submit the details of Nigerians understudying expatriates in their organisations. They must submit the Tax Identification Number, NIN of each Nigerian understudying expatriates in their companies.
“We have discovered that some of the companies are not sincere; they just want to keep renewing the permits of their expatriates at the detriment of Nigerians. We want to know whether they are circumventing the policy or they adhere to it.
“The problem is that some of these companies are either not employing Nigerians at all or using school certificate holders to understudy expatriates who are managers. How can a school certificate holder understudy a manager?
“What they are aiming at is that when the times come for the expatriates to exit, the companies will say those understudying the expatriates do not have the capacity to become managers, and you will agree with them. What that means is that Nigerians will not get to such positions and the expatriates will be there forever.
“How can a school certificate holder succeed a manager when we have millions of BSc. holders and Master’s degree holders? But they do that deliberately to defeat the purpose of the policy of the Federal Government.”
