“Wait and have faith”: The quest to end the exploitation of Nigerian migrant workers

On November 4, 2020, at 9:05 a.m., 24-year-old Mary* arrived in Nigeria. That Wednesday morning, on the journey back to her family who had rescued her, Mary was unsure of what lay ahead. When she got to the Lagos airport, the time was already 3:05 PM. Amidst the plethora of emotions expressed through consistent hugs, the words of her aunt stuck with her: “Thank you, This is Lebanon. My sister is back.”

Mary left her parents, husband and her two kids in Ogun State, Nigeria to Lebanon in August 2019. Mary’s pastor had informed her about a $200-per-month domestic worker job in Lebanon. The pastor was made aware of the job by an Egyptian agent whom he knew. As of then, Mary was without a job and was eager to leave the country and live a better life in an assumed healthy atmosphere. 

Upon reaching Lebanon, her passport was seized by immigration officers. She had to wait in a room where she and about 80 other Nigerian girls who boarded the same plane with her were hidden. The other girls had also tendered their passports and waited for their employers. Mary had to wait for four hours before her employer, Nisrine Zawahra Daher, came to pick her up. The next year and a few months to come were going to be life-changing for Mary. She knew it but never imagined it to be wrecking. 

‘As long as it wasn’t Nigeria’

Mary believed Lebanon was a place like the UK and US she often heard about. She wanted an experience that wasn’t her home country, Nigeria. 

“The day I got to Lebanon, I was so happy. It was the first time I boarded a plane but once I had stayed there for a while, it was not easy,” she said. “It’s not because of the money. I just wanted to go and work. I didn’t even know that’s how it would be. I knew they always talked about the UK and USA as good places. I thought since it wasn’t Nigeria, maybe Lebanon would be okay too.”

Mary endured terrible work conditions such as having to wake up early and work till late at night. Most times, she was unable to eat due to the workload. Whenever she got lucky, she was able to eat twice a day. Her typical daily life was without a proper place to sleep. She woke, worked and slept in the kitchen. She also went through physical abuse when she made her first attempt to leave for Nigeria.

In 2020, Mary’s mother called to inform her about her father’s death. As the first child of her parents, tradition meant that she had to travel to Nigeria to observe a rite of passage only she would be able to undertake. Upon polite notice to Nisrine and her husband, they immediately objected, threatening to send her to jail or kill her. She was beaten that day and that led to the seizure of her phone. 

“If God said I’d not go back to Nigeria, it’s fine,” she said. “I had to accept fate and put myself in the hands of God because I was already tired. Those people can do and undo. I could not drag her since I had no family there. I had to wait and have faith.”

Kafala, the unchecked slavery system 

Mary’s story is not uncommon for domestic workers who seek to work in an environment where their services are legalised. However, this has been tied to the debate on human rights and the view of labour migration laws. 

In the Middle East, there’s a system called Kafala which has by practice been made synonymous with slavery. Under the Kafala system, migrant domestic workers who are dominantly women and labourers from Africa and South Asia go to work under the trusteeship of an employer who pays for their upkeep and travel. This system is primarily in seven Arab countries among which Lebanon chiefly operates. Other countries include Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. 

According to 2020 data from the United Nations International Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF), about 70.1 million people take up domestic work, however, due to obscurity in the sector, there may be about 100 million people taking up domestic services. 

Despite the sheer size of the informal sector, the rights of informal workers are not being protected. This is especially the case in the Global South where countries are unable to help the constant population of migrants seeking better employment and living conditions in other countries. Many of these workers have to travel illegally, encountering multiple perils during the journey or even arriving at unplanned destinations.

Lebanon’s Kafala system has been rooted in the aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War of 1975 to 1990, which saw the exodus of about a million people. Prior, households were employers of young Lebanese girls who are trusted to work for a certain period while their salaries were collected by their families. To make up for the lost population, entries of domestic workers were made legal by the Ministry of Labour. 

In this event, recruiting agencies are licensed and they connect with other agencies in countries where the migrants come from. Employers are required to meet with the migrant workers in the airport where their passports would be entitled to the former. The work contract, instead of being with the concerned parties i.e. the employer and the worker, rather passes through an external agent who serves as a middleman between the domestic worker and the employer. This leaves the second party i.e the domestic worker in sheer vulnerability. 

Mary is unsure of the connection between her pastor and the Egyptian agent. She had to pay the latter $600 — an equivalent of her three months’ salary, even after her employer, Nisrine had given the agent a sum of $3200, which included Mary’s visa and other travel upkeep. 

There have been reforms by the Lebanese government even though it still leaves a significant gap to question the injustice of migrant domestic workers to date. In 2001, the Lebanese Ministry of Labour ordered that ten recruiting agencies be closed upon violation of labour regulations. In 2012, the Ministry was sponsored by the European Union (EU) to release an information guide on the rights and responsibilities of a domestic worker; how to travel to Lebanon as a migrant domestic worker; how to adapt to the Arabic language and what to do when in trouble. 

Upon these and many other steps by the government, not all laws that guide migrant domestic workers are ratified. Some of the conventions that have been signed by the country include the 1949 Universal Declaration of Rights (UDHR) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions. The ILO hosts several conventions that are beneficial to migrant domestic workers. For example, the Migration for Employment Convention of 1949, the Migration for Employment Recommendation of 1949 and the Migrant Workers Convention of 1975 aren’t ratified by the country. 

In Article 7 of the Lebanese Labour Law, domestic workers are excluded from the constitution, denying them access to minimum wage and the right to change employers. Of the estimated 250,000 plus migrant domestic workers, the country’s General Security Intelligence Agency confirmed that at least two domestic workers die in a week as a result of suicide and other forms of unnatural death. 

Also, Article 4 of the Labour Law and Decree No. 7993 of 1952 bar domestic workers from forming trade unions. Even if a move to form any trade union whatsoever is made, Article 86 of the Lebanese Labour Code states the need for authorization while this is subject to political affiliation. 

This contradicts the ILO convention No. 87, the freedom of association and protection of the right to organise, which states in Article 2 that no prior registration with government officials is needed to form a labour union.

Nigeria’s Law 

The 2007 National Bureau Statistics of Nigeria estimated domestic workers at 197,900, comprising 98,300 women and 99,600 men — although these numbers are likely underestimated. 

Section 91 of the Nigerian Labour Act (1971)  states that a worker is “…any member of the civil service of the Federation, of a State or Local Government or any individual (other than persons occupying executive, administrative, technical or professional positions in any such civil service) who has entered into or works under a contract with an employer, whether the contract is manual labour, clerical work or otherwise, expressed or implied, or in writing, and whether it is a contract personally to execute any work or labour.”

In March 2019, the Nigerian Senate proposed that the National minimum wage be raised from NGN18,000 ($41) to NGN30,000 ($68) whereas, a domestic worker is not a beneficiary of this. The country hasn’t ratified some of ILO’s C189 standards for regulating domestic work including the Labour Regulations (1936), the Labour Act (1990), the Anti-trafficking Policy (2003), the Employee Compensation Act (2010) and the Labour Migration Policy (2013). 

This further affects the domestic-worker industry of the country, unusually categorised by the vulnerable ones including women and children. In few cases are men involved in work-related abuses (in the industry). It even affects the youths who are hopeful about the income they can receive from any job — as long as they are protected. Once domestic work regulations are not fixed, it becomes twice harder for migrant domestic workers. 

Horns and tails 

Mary’s 21-year-old sister Dorcas* traveled to Burkina Faso with her son for domestic work in April 2019 — four months before Mary’s departure to Lebanon. As for her, she took the advice of her sister-in-law. Till today, the young lady is reportedly dead without confirmation of her corpse while only her son was brought back to Nigeria in 2020, the same year their father passed away. 

In shock, Mary’s mother sought the help of her sister, Mary’s aunt, to speak with This is Lebanon, a registered Canada-based organisation formed by Dipendra Uprety and Priya Subedi, former migrant workers in Lebanon on International Workers’ Day  in 2017. 

In a few years of Diprenda’s 15 years of service as an honorary representative of the Nepali Consulate, only one of 42 different murder cases of non-Lebanese migrant domestic workers was brought to justice. It is no surprise that contacting the Lebanese Ministry of Labour and even involving the police to rescue migrant domestic workers are a dead-end owing to the existing law. This led the founders to choose Canada as a strategic place of operation while leading numerous cases.

Mary is still clueless as to how she got back to Nigeria. She hasn’t bothered to know enough details about the organisation that intervened in her case. However, the assurance of her rescue started on a Monday morning — two days before she got to her country — when the Nigerian embassy contacted Nisrine to probe her about claims of withdrawing entitled payments to Mary. She couldn’t deny this time but took  This Is Lebanon through the long route. 

Left to Mary, she was ready to leave for Nigeria that Monday. After reaching the embassy with Nisrine, Mary’s six months’ outstanding payments were paid to her immediately. Two officials were assigned to follow her to Nisrine’s apartment so she could gather her belongings. Knowing that she couldn’t access a flight the next day, it took her two nights in the embassy before she could board a plane. 

This Is Lebanon ensured every denial by Nisrine was recorded and published in compounded and consistent online posts for wider reach until the pressure got fueled. Speaking to Patricia, a member of the team, most of the cases they’ve solved include high numbers of migrant domestic worker victims from Nigeria. 

“We’re not so good at keeping track of cases but we’ve marked 229 women as rescued from slavery. It’s probably a lot higher than that,” she said. “Since 2018, 13,736 people have contacted us. The workers are mainly from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Philippines, Sierra Leone, and Bangladesh.” 

In the past, the organisation employed a mechanism such as illustrating defaulting employers with horns and tails on their social media platform. However, they had to refrain from such. It is noted for its usage of social media as its rescue tactic although very little can be done if the industry is not recognised and regulated. 

Ensuring Professionalism 

Here to Help Nigeria is a registered charity serving as an intermediary between domestic workers and employers. Since it is based in Nigeria, it has been able to carry out specific non-disclosure agreement (NDA) cases of abuse focused on the citizens of the country.

Growing up, Adedamola Ososanya witnessed several unjust treatments towards domestic workers in her environment. “I have a strong dislike of classism which is something very obvious in Nigeria,” she said. “I would be playing – doing normal childhood things – while these children are working and maltreated for doing the same.” 

Adedamola would eventually set out to establish a Here to Help Nigeria with her co-founder, Ololade Ganikale, an experienced advocate against sexual assault, in 2018. This was immediately after she got her first job capable of bootstrapping the NGO to a certain extent. 

To date, Here to Help Nigeria has worked on close to ten cases, with some being facades that needed to be thoroughly investigated by government agencies like the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) or other organisations with the right infrastructure. “We’ve seen instances where people report false cases. It turns out that such a person is trying to hustle for money, which is rather unfortunate,” Adedamola said. “One of the worst things you can do is pick up a case when you don’t have the resources to deal with it. Rather, you’ll redirect them to alternative organisations that have the likely resources.” 

Here to Help Nigeria has an advocacy platform that amplifies cases embarked on by other organisations particularly Domestic Workers Advocacy Network (DOWAN) and This is Lebanon. It also has a certification program in partnership with Lisa Academy, an organisation that recognises skilled and trained domestic workers and recruitment agencies to ensure adequate accountability and protection of human and work environment rights. This is in its aim to see to the formalisation and regulation of the industry.

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Speaking on the need to recognise the informal industry, Adedamola noted that even employers bear the brunt of injustice. “Let’s not pretend as if employees are the only victims. There have been cases where employers bring domestic workers into their house while their (employer) children are poisoned,” he said. “By regulatory measure, a standard is created for who can and should be employed in the industry. We’re able to protect domestic workers’ rights as well as an age requirement for child workers. Abuse has been normalised so we need to get people more sensitised.

“Having this enforced by the police and other relevant authorities are some of the steps that need to take place if we’re going to see any real change.”

Nigeria’s Response 

On August 14, 2020, the Foreign Minister of Affairs in Nigeria, Godfrey Onyema and the Lebanese Ambassador to Nigeria, Houssam Diab resolved in a meeting to address labour laws and the repatriation of more than 500 Nigerian domestic workers from Lebanon. 

According to the minister, labour laws would be looked into while the Lebanese ambassador expressed that Nigerian girls aiming to be domestic workers in Lebanon would be denied visas to lessen the influx of young girls who are abused and left stranded in the destination country.

“As of the 1st of May of [2022], the Lebanese government has stopped issuing visas for domestic workers — ladies coming from Nigeria. This will stop any new cases from arising,” Diab said. 

He further explained the process to justify the need for agencies involved in the communication between employers and employees. To his belief, the process has disenabled smuggling and human trafficking. 

“90 per cent of these agencies are Nigerian agencies. They are applying through Lebanese agencies through the security general to acquire work visas and permits for these ladies,” he added.

To reveal that not all of the estimated 5000 Nigerians in Lebanon are domestic workers, he mentioned that many of them are making ends meet from other jobs. “The issue of abuse is very few as they can be found on social media. But, we have to be careful because not all of these videos are true and they are affecting the ones that have good jobs.”

Although it is not confirmed that some of these victims have illegally migrated, it is to the public eye that a considerable number of them are abused, which has resulted in death.

In the latest development by the government, a bill sponsored by a member of the Senate, Sani Musa, on September 29 of 2022 was scaled to the second reading. This move was to regulate and formalise the employment of domestic workers, apprentices, interns and other informal sector employees in Nigeria.

According to the lawmaker: “There are still a lot of deficits in the implementation of these (ILO) conventions, one of such areas of concern relates to a decent work deficit.”

As of November 8, 2022, the Federal Republic of Nigeria has ratified two labour-related conventions. Convention No. 187, which addresses the Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health Convention, 2006 and Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190), are the country’s effort to ensure a domestically regulated work environment. 

It is a goal to have the industry regulated, but what is the consequence for those operating outside the regulations? Migrant labour regulations are yet to be discussed. 

Emigration Nightmare 

Many Nigerians have dreams to relocate to other countries and even change their nationality due to factors not limited to the economic situation, unemployment and insecurity posed to citizens in the country.  

In a 2018 PEW research survey, 45% of adult Nigerians plan to relocate to another country within the next five years, their destination regions being Europe, the Middle East and North America. Meanwhile, the UK government announced its review of the rise in the population of migrant dependents. 

Now divorced, Mary is maintaining a single-parent lifestyle in another state. Even after the death of her sister, she is still keen on travelling to another country although, this time, she would always inform people of the hardship in Arab countries. 

“I do not want to work as a domestic worker again,” she said. “If I want to travel, God should help me to Canada, UK or US because any Arab country is not easy.”

Edited and Reviewed by Cassandra Roxburgh, Uzoma Ihejrika, PK Cross, and Caleb Okereke.