Sixteen years after the recapitalisation exercise carried out by CBN and NDIC which affected over 1000 bank workers, the National Industrial Court in Lagos has ordered the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) to pay all the affected workers terminal benefits of over N5.7bn.
The court instructed the sum to be paid within three months from the date of the judgment, which failing to pay will attract a 10 percent interest until liquidation.
Honourable Justice Paul Ahmed Bassi made the order in his judgment on Monday regarding the case filed by 1,116 claimants who had approached the court in 2018. The court also ordered the CBN and the NDIC to pay another N10m as general damages to the workers.
Although several objections were made by the defendants who insisted that the suit was inconsequential to them as they were not the employers of the workers, Justice Bassi ruled that by revoking the banking licences of the non-consolidated banks, the defendants breached the employment contracts of the bank workers.
