NIGERIA’S PROPOSED DOMESTIC WORKERS’ RIGHTS ACT: IMPLICATIONS FOR STAKEHOLDERS

Abstract

A Bill on the rights of domestic workers, premised on the International Labour Organisation’s Convention No. 189, was recently proposed by Nigeria’s National Assembly, It was welcomed by the executive arm of government as aligned with its law reforms agenda for Nigeria’s Labour Act of 2004. In Nigeria, ‘Domestic work’ is ‘invisible’ and unregulated. Besides that, the rights of workers, both in private and public sectors are often abused, or not being fully implemented, despite some proactive pronouncements of the country’s Industrial Court, which has constitutional authority to determine labour-related disputes based on international best practices. This paper, through doctrinal research into the background of the C189, assessed the successes and failures of other signatories of the convention to juxtapose the findings with Nigeria’s socio-cultural realities. Based on human rights theory, it x-rayed the hurdles that will likely arise in the implementation of the proposed law. These included socio-cultural attitudes towards human rights of the down-trodden members of the society, often seen as mere charity cases. Others were attitudes of the various stakeholders towards a formalised regime for domestic workers. The paper recommended mass education and reorientation on the right to decent work as a human right. It also highlighted the need for meticulous and accountable regulation of the private recruitment agencies prescribed by the Bill, to ensure the training and retraining of domestic workers to better entitle them to minimum wage and other rights of workers.