Court orders Afribank to pay ex-staff redundancy benefits

 By Abdulwahab Abdulah

Kano division of the   National Industrial Court has ordered the Afribank Nigeria Plc and its Managing Director, Nebolisa Arah, to pay three of its former staff, Maikudi Aminu, Umar Isah and Nura Jaafaru, their redundancy benefits.

The court asked the bank to compute all the claimants’ redundancy benefits in their presence or their accredited representatives based on their last earned salary.

Justice M. B. Dadda in a judgment in the suit filed by the claimants said, “in doing so, whatever has already been paid to each claimant shall be deducted from the amount such a claimant is entitled to be paid. We hold that all the claims of the claimants in this suit succeed”.

The claimants had urged the court to determine whether in view of the bank’s May 27, 2009 letter of their disengagement from service, they were not entitled to the full payment of their benefits in line with Article 5 of the Collective,
Agreement between the Nigerian Employers, Association of Banks, Insurance and Allied Institutions and the Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions.

They also prayed the court to determine whether, based on the agreement, the bank should have computed the redundancy disengagement benefits based on the claimants’ old salaries and entitlements or current salaries; and whether the bank was right to have paid them the disengagement benefits based on the non-existent salary scale.

Therefore, they asked the court to declare that Afribank has no legal right nor basis to compute their redundancy benefits based on the old salary of 2005; that the formular for the computation of the redundancy payments should be in accordance with the Collective Agreement and disengagement letter of May 27, 2009.

According to them, their redundancy benefits should be based on their last earned current salary as at May, 2009. They prayed the court to direct the bank to pay them and other former Afribank staff affected by the action their arrears and the balance of their entitlements and redundancy benefits based on their last earned salary.

The court held that “having gone through the processes filed by the claimants, we were unable to see where the claimants pleaded wrongful termination of their employments. Therefore the submissions by the respondents’ counsel on that point were misconceived and go to no issue.

“The respondents’ sole reliance on the non-authenticity of the claimants’ exhibits for either being uncertified, unsigned, etc does not avail them of any defence in this circumstance.”