Court awards ₦108.5m to 18 workers over discrimination

The National Industrial Court in Yola has ordered the Taraba State Government and other defendants to pay ₦108.5 million to 18 former employees of Taraba Publishing Company Limited.

Justice James Fishim delivered the judgment on June 24 in Suit No. NICN/JOS/12/2021. The judgment, whose copy recently became public, found that the workers, including journalists, were unlawfully excluded from absorption into the Taraba State Civil Service because they were not indigenes of the state.

The court awarded ₦73,257,715.40 in unpaid salaries and other entitlements covering September 2014 to January 2021. It added ₦30 million in damages for the claimants’ mental suffering and hardship, plus ₦5.25 million in legal costs. The defendants must also pay 10% annual interest until the judgment debt is fully settled.

The workers said their appointments had been confirmed after probation and that they continued working until September 2014, when their salaries stopped. They said they never received formal termination or disengagement letters. After the publishing company stopped operating some offices, the government allegedly absorbed other former employees into the civil service but excluded them because they came from outside Taraba.

The defendants argued that the company had been wound up and was legally separate from the state government. They also said the workers had no employment contract with the government. Justice Agbadu-Fishim rejected that defence, citing documents including a Corporate Affairs Commission status report. The court found that the government had promoted and incorporated the company, controlled its affairs, and appointed its managing consultant and chief executive officer. It said the government could not establish the company, employ workers through it, stop funding or operating it, leave their employment formally unresolved, and then invoke separate legal personality to avoid its obligations. The court specifically condemned the discrimination in excluding the 18 workers from redeployment.