An African saying teaches us something crucial: a child cannot be blamed for soup cooked by the entire household.
Nigeria's personnel outsourcing industry embodies this wisdom in reverse. Companies are increasingly forcing outsourcing firms to shoulder crushing liability burdens that don't belong to them alone.
Across corporate Nigeria, outsourcing contracts now pack sweeping indemnity clauses. These provisions require service providers to absorb fraud losses, negligence claims, customer complaints, operational disruptions, regulatory exposure, and reputational damage.
On the surface, this looks sensible. Every business wants protection.
But the reality tells a different story entirely.
No industry can strengthen itself when its commercial foundation keeps cracking. That's what's happening here.
Large corporations write these contracts. They set the terms, impose liability structures, dictate pricing, and sometimes run reverse-bidding wars that reward the cheapest bid.
The outsourcing provider then must deliver quality work while managing employment obligations on razor-thin margins.
They're forced to quote rock-bottom prices while carrying the broadest possible risk. It's an impossible equation.
Personnel outsourcing is workforce management, not corporate insurance. Outsourcing companies recruit people, vet them, deploy them, and handle payroll and statutory obligations.
Where they genuinely fail—deploying unvetted workers, ignoring red flags, breaking employment laws—they should answer for it.
But indemnity clauses were never designed to transfer an entire client's operational risk to one service provider.
International labour thinking supports this view. The International Labour Organization's Private Employment Agencies Convention of 1997 recognizes legitimate roles for employment agencies.
Importantly, Article 12 requires that responsibilities between agencies and user enterprises be allocated fairly under national law.
That's a framework of shared responsibility. Not a dumping ground for all corporate risk.
Consider how outsourced workers actually operate. They work within systems the client designed and controls.
Clients determine workflows, approval structures, transaction limits, access rights, and supervisory oversight. Clients set the governance processes and internal controls.
When losses happen, they rarely involve just one person. A fraudulent banking transaction succeeds because multiple safeguards collapse simultaneously.
It passes through approval layers, supervisors, control officers, and compliance checks.
Why, then, does the outsourcing firm bear total responsibility just because one outsourced employee was involved?
The answer matters for Nigeria's economic future. A personnel outsourcing sector squeezed by unfair liability risks cannot innovate or invest in better services.
It cannot attract talent or expand responsibly.
Corporate clients benefit from this sector. They reduce overhead costs, manage workforce flexibility, and access specialized talent.
Those benefits should come with fair risk allocation.
Nigeria needs strong outsourcing firms—not weakened providers absorbing losses that belong to the entire operating system.
Responsibility cannot be outsourced. But neither should it be dumped wholesale onto one party simply for having deployed a worker in a much larger corporate machinery.
