Nigeria, June 8 -- A middle-aged woman stretched her right hand forward, her words uttered with practiced nonchalance. She promptly instructed this reporter to pay a N3, 000 'registration fee'.

By now, her face had contoured into a smirk, and her demeanor like that of someone in haste. Behind her stood a heap of files and papers, mostly abandoned and dust-ridden.

There were some books and an old dictionary on her desk, from which she would later pick a flyer. She is a staff of Esther Breakthrough Nig. Limited, a recruitment agency operating from the busy streets of Ojuelegba, in the heart of Lagos, Nigeria's commercial nerve centre.

It was in January 2020, two months before the Nigerian government announced lockdown measures to curb th...