Collective Voice, Platform Power, and Labour Rights in Nigeria’s Digital Gig Economy: Toward a New Regulatory Framework

This doctoral study develops an original theoretical analysis of collective voice mechanisms, platform power dynamics, and labour rights deficits in Nigeria's rapidly expanding digital gig economy, culminating in a novel Nigerian Gig Labour Regulatory Framework that addresses the institutional governance vacuum currently characterising this employment sector. Platform companies including ride-hailing, food delivery, digital freelancing, and domestic services marketplaces have created a new employment category in Nigeria that exploits regulatory ambiguity to avoid labour law obligations while exercising substantial behavioural control over workers, constituting what Weil has termed the fissured workplace in a distinctly Nigerian variant shaped by informality norms, weak regulatory capacity, and smartphone penetration dynamics. Drawing on Weil's Fissured Workplace Theory, Srnicek's Platform Capitalism Analysis, and Kessler-Harris's Theory of Labour Rights as Social Rights, this study employs a critical institutional design involving 110 qualitative interviews with gig workers, platform algorithm engineers, labour regulators, and digital economy lawyers across Lagos, Abuja, and Kano, supplemented by textual analysis of platform terms-of-service, algorithmic deactivation protocols, and Nigerian court decisions on platform work. The original theoretical contribution is a Nigerian Platform Labour Power-Rights Matrix that maps platform power dimensions against corresponding labour rights gaps, generating a typology of Nigerian gig labour vulnerability that distinguishes between algorithmic precariousness, collective voice absence, and social protection exclusion as analytically separable rights deficits requiring distinct regulatory responses. Recommendations include a Nigerian Platform Workers' Rights Act, portable benefits system for gig workers, and a Platform Labour Regulatory Authority. Keywords: gig economy, collective voice, platform power, labour rights, Nigeria