Nigeria’s Informal Workers Hit Hard By Covid-19 Lockdown Measures

During the first wave of the pandemic in Nigeria, security forces were mandated to enforce lockdown and stay-at-home orders. Intended as public health measures, these controls inflicted collateral damage.

The damage included arrests and detention, harassment, extrajudicial killings, destruction of goods, maiming, and torture. The controls also trampled on the human rights and economic rights of workers in the informal economy.

The most affected were street vendors, artisans, cart pushers, waste pickers, commercial motorcycle operators, and roadside motor mechanics, among others, write Chidi Nzeadibe, Christian Ezeibe, Kelechi Elijah Nnamani, Nkemdilim Patricia Anazonwu, Nnabuike Osadebe, Obiora Anichebe, and Peter Mbah for The Conversation.

Despite the warning by the UN High Commission for Human Rights, that states should not violate human rights under the guise of exceptional or emergency measures, some actions by Nigerian security agencies violated the rights of informal workers. 

Some states in Nigeria such as Abia, Ekiti, Lagos, Kaduna, and Rivers recorded incidents of abuse such as destruction of traders' goods by security operatives enforcing the lockdown policy. Cases were reported where security agencies were implicated in harassment, killings, maiming, and torture.