Top 5 companies that pay the highest salaries in Nigeria 2023

The Nigerian company that pays the highest salary in 2023 is Seplat Energy paying an average N32.4 million yearly (N2.7 million monthly).

As Nigeria’s economy continues to expand and diversify, employee compensation has emerged as a major incentive to attract and retain top talents as businesses seek to maintain market dominance in terms of performance and level of employees. 

Other high salary paying companies include TotalEnergies, and MTN Nigeria, these comapanies led the list of companies that paid the most average salary per staff in Nigeria in the year 2022, based on average employee expenses for the year.

Nairametrics reviewed over 50 companies that are quoted on the Nigeria Exchange in other to come up with this list. In terms of Staff Strength the companies under review analysis employed over 100,000 employees combined in 2022.

Banks led the way when it came to personnel expenses and staff strength. However, the size of the employees and implication for salaries affected their average salary per staff in the period under review.

The companies divide their salaries into personnel expenses, training and recruitment, bonuses, and other compensations.

Here is a review of the top 5 companies that pay the highest salary in Nigeria based on average salary expense per staff:

5. Access Holdings – N17.1 million yearly (N1.4 million monthly)

Access Holdings, the holding company of Access Bank is the 5th highest salary paying company in Nigeria paying its staff  an average of N17.1 million yearly (N1.4 million monthly) in 2022. This figure is an increment from the N14.05 million it recorded in the previous year. 

Access Holdings has a combined staff strength of 6,824 employees which it paid N105.6 billion in the year under review. The staff composition of the company showed that 545 of the employees were in managerial positions, while 6,279 employees functioned in other capacities below the management level. Further analysis showed that about 10% of the employees earned N18 million and above annually in 2022. 

4. Nigerian Breweries – N19.12 million yearly (N1.6 million monthly)

Nigerian Breweries ranked fourth highest salary paying company in Nigeria. The company paid its employees an average salary of N19.12 million yearly (N1.6 million monthly) in 2022.

The brewing company spent the sum of N51.34 billion on personnel costs to its 2,685 employees in the year under review. A cursory review of the company’s financials showed that 84.7% of the company’s workforce was among the higher-paid staff (N5 million and above yearly). 

3. MTN Nigeria – N26.91 million yearly (N2.5 million monthly)

Telecommunication company, MTN Nigeria paid its employees a total of N33.93 billion in the review year. MTN has a total staff strength of 1,675 employees in Nigeria which it pays on average N2.5 million wages to.

2. TotalEnergies – N30.48 million yearly (2.54 million monthly)

TotalEnergies followed as the second highest-paying company in 2022, after incurring an annual average personal cost of N30.48 million (N2.5 million monthly).

TotalEnergies has a total staff strength of 429 employees in Nigeria in the year under review 2022.

More than half of the employees in TotalEnergies were amongst the highest paid in the company. 225 employees earned above N15.5 million annually. 

1. Seplat Energy – N38.91 million yearly (N3.5 million monthly)

Seplat Energy is the Nigerian company that pays the highest salary to its employees.

The upstream Nigerian oil company spent a sum of N23.19 billion on personnel expenses in 2022, to its 596 total employees.

Criteria

Below is a list of criteria used by Nairametrics to rank the companies that pays the highest salaries in Nigeria:

• This analysis is based on the Bluechip companies listed on the Nigerian Exchange and their published audited results for the year 2022.
• We did not include companies that paid less than N10 billion per annum in salary expenses in our top 5. However, they were part of the initial list of 60 companies we reviewed.
• We reviewed the total personnel expenses paid by each company in the financial year ending December 2022. This includes salaries, training, manpower cost, bonuses, and other emoluments. This may not translate to their actual take home which may vary depending on company policy.
• To arrive at the average personnel expense per person we divided the total number of personnel expenses by the total number of staff in the bank.
• We also reviewed the senior, management, and executive staff of the companies to determine the ranges of salaries and ranked accordingly.
• FBN Holdings was not included in this article, as the group is yet to release its financials for the review year.