Discrimination

In employment the issues arise at recognisable points.

Recruitment: advertisements specifying a state of origin, a religion, an age or a sex where the role does not require it.

Pay: paying differently for the same work on grounds unrelated to the work.

Promotion and training: excluding people from opportunities on protected grounds.

Pregnancy: treating a pregnant employee less favourably, including refusing to hire, terminating, or denying maternity entitlements.

Disability: refusing to consider reasonable adjustment, or excluding a person capable of the role.

HIV status: requiring testing as a condition of employment, or acting on status.

And harassment, which is discriminatory conduct where it is based on a protected characteristic.

For an employer, the practical measures are documentation and consistency. Job descriptions and selection criteria that are role related. Recruitment records showing why candidates were selected. A written policy. A grievance route that does not run through the person complained of. And decisions on pay and promotion that can be explained by reference to something other than the characteristic.

The National Industrial Court has been the main engine here, because it is empowered to apply international best practice and ratified conventions alongside Nigerian law.

That has allowed it to address conduct that the domestic statutes do not expressly cover, including in the area of workplace harassment and discriminatory treatment, and it means an employer should not assume that the absence of a comprehensive statute means the absence of exposure.

Three Nigerian patterns are worth naming.

State of origin. Recruitment and promotion practices that turn on indigeneity or state of origin are common, and section 42 addresses discrimination by reason of community, ethnic group or place of origin. Employers who advertise or select on that basis are exposed.

Pregnancy and marital status. Requiring female candidates to disclose marital status or pregnancy intentions, and terminating on pregnancy, remain common and are exposed both constitutionally and under international standards.

Disability. The 2018 Act imposes obligations including in relation to employment and access, and it provides for enforcement. Employers that have never considered accessibility or adjustment should treat it as a live compliance area.

For employees, the practical route is to document: keep the advertisement, the correspondence, the comparator information where you have it, and any statement that connects the treatment to the characteristic. Claims are decided on what can be shown, and discriminatory reasoning is rarely put in writing, so contemporaneous notes matter.

Three overlapping employment claims that are not the same.

Discrimination concerns why somebody was treated less favourably: because of a protected characteristic rather than because of their conduct or capability. It can arise without any dismissal at all, in pay, promotion or recruitment.

Unfair dismissal concerns how an employment ended: whether there was a valid reason and a fair process. It arises only where employment terminated.

Harassment concerns conduct creating a hostile environment. Where it is based on a protected characteristic it is discriminatory; where it is not, it may still found a claim on other grounds and it engages the employer's duties.

A single set of facts can support more than one. An employee dismissed on becoming pregnant may have a discrimination claim and an unfair dismissal claim, and the analysis and the evidence differ for each.

The absence of a consolidated statute makes the law harder to state and harder for employees to invoke.

Proof is the practical difficulty. Discriminatory reasoning is rarely documented, and a claimant must usually build a case from circumstantial evidence and comparators.

Enforcement also depends on the employee bringing a claim, and in a labour market where jobs are scarce, few do.

And remedies are compensatory and modest, which limits the deterrent effect on employers who have made a commercial calculation.