paternity leave

Tunde works in the compliance unit of a bank in Lagos, and when his wife went into labour on a Tuesday night, he sent one message to his line manager and switched off his phone for three days.

Nobody queried him. He came back the following week, showed his daughter's photo to everyone on the floor, and got straight back to his reports.

That calm arrangement, a few days off with pay because a child has arrived, is what paternity leave means.

In Nigeria, there is no single law that forces every employer to give it, so it depends heavily on company policy. Some banks and multinationals in Lagos give between three and ten working days. Many smaller businesses give nothing at all, and the father either takes his annual leave or manages without pay.

In the United Kingdom, it works differently because it sits inside employment law. An eligible employee can take one or two weeks of statutory paternity leave, paid at a set weekly rate or ninety percent of average earnings, whichever is lower, funded partly by the government.

For a Nigerian man working in London while his family is still settling in, this matters practically. He is more than hoping his boss is kind, he has a legal right to those days, and that certainty is worth knowing before the baby arrives, not after.