Nigeria and UAE tighten labor regulations to protect local employment

Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates are implementing stricter measures to regulate foreign labor and protect local employment.

In Nigeria, the Federal Government has pledged to penalize companies that abuse expatriate quotas. Interior Minister Rauf Aregbesola stated that the government aims to curb practices where expatriates engage in manual labor or use fraudulent marriages to acquire citizenship. By enforcing an efficient quota management system, the government expects to generate approximately 60,000 middle-level employment opportunities annually while ensuring technology transfer and manpower development.

In the United Arab Emirates, the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MOHRE) reported a 34.5% decrease in violations related to ‘sham Emiratisation’. The number of establishments found practicing these schemes dropped from 1,037 in 2024 to 679 in 2025. MOHRE defines sham Emiratisation as arrangements lacking real wages, work, or subordination, and continues to use digital monitoring to prevent companies from circumventing localization policies to claim government incentives.