Hon. Justice Sanusi Kado of the National Industrial Court (NIC) Abuja judicial division, has declared the employment termination of Mr. Bello Ibrahim by Ecobank without valid justifiable reasons as wrongful and total disregard to the international best practices.
The Court ordered immediate reinstatement of Bello back to the employment of Ecobank and payment of N500,000.00 cost of action.
Details of the ruling were contained in a release posted on the NIC website on Sunday.
Bello had submitted that during the period of his employment he served diligently and was never involved in disciplinary misconduct or misappropriation of finance of any kind, that he was shocked to received Letter terminating his employment without giving the reason for such termination.
He stated that the termination of his employment was not done merely as an exercise of the bank’s right to terminate the contract but was done wrongfully in a bid to victimize him and not in line with international standard practice.
However, Ecobank stated that the claimant exited the service of the defendant under the rightsizing exercise carried out by the bank in January 2018 and his benefits and entitlements were duly paid to him that the motive behind termination is not vital in the determination of wrongfulness or otherwise of termination.
The defendant insisted that the termination of the employment was done in the exercise of the right to determine the contractual relationship as permitted upon payment of one Month salary in lieu of notice of termination. The defendant tendered in evidence of one month salary paid on 8/2/18 in lieu of notice, that the claimant has not put forward any cogent evidence before the court to prove his employment was wrongfully terminated urged the court to dismiss the suit.
In reply, counsel to the claimant Adaolisa Anyanutaku, contended that the claimant has shown that the arbitrary termination of his contract of employment has caused him to suffer loss both financially and in terms of reputation that Reinstatement would in no way affect the affairs of the defendant given the peculiar nature of the case that defendant is in charge of a large number of employees scattered across the country.
Counsel contended that by Article 4 of the Termination of Employment Convention 1982, that motives are indispensable in this kind of situation that given the disgraceful nature in which the claimant’s employment was terminated, that a reinstatement is only fair to restore losses.
In opposition, counsel to the defendant […]
