Domestic help is ordinary in Lagos, well beyond the wealthy: a housekeeper, a nanny, a cook, a driver, a guard at the gate. It is also an employment relationship in your own home, and it goes well or badly mostly according to how carefully it starts.
Finding someone
- Recommendations from friends, colleagues and neighbours are the usual route, and usually the best.
- Agencies supply domestic staff for a fee, and good ones check references and replace someone who does not work out. Ask exactly what the fee covers and what checks they did.
Check before you hire
For a driver, add the driver’s licence and a drive with you in Lagos traffic. For a nanny, add time with your children while you are there.
Agree the terms in writing
Write down, and both sign:
- The job - what is and is not included
- The pay, the day it is paid, and how
- Hours, days off and annual leave
- For live-in staff, the room, meals and what happens when they are ill
- Notice, on both sides
Pay on time, every month, by transfer to their own account. A record of payment protects both of you.
The national minimum wage is ₦70,000 a month. Paying a full-time worker less than that, whatever the household’s legal position, is paying them less than the floor the country has set.
Never a child
The Child’s Rights Act 2003, which Lagos has adopted, forbids employing a child as domestic help outside their own family. A “house girl” or “house boy” brought from a village to work for a family in Lagos is a child at work, however the arrangement is described to you. It is unlawful, and it is exploitation.
When it ends
Give the notice you agreed, pay what is owed to the last day, and give a reference if it is deserved. Do not accuse someone of theft without evidence, and never search or detain them yourself; report a suspected crime to the police.