Jubilation as Court Orders CBN, NDIC to Pay Bank Workers N5.7 Billion

Jubilation erupts as the bank representatives received a judgment in their favour as the National Industrial Court ordered the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) to pay over N5.7bn terminal benefits to over 1,000 bank workers affected by the re-capitalisation exercise of 2006.

The court ordered the CBN and NDIC to pay the money within three months, starting from the day the judgment was issued, and will start attracting 10 percent interest thereafter.

While delivering the judgment on Monday, Justice Paul Bassi ordered the two bodies to pay another N10m as general damages to the claimants.

Justice Bassi overlooked the earlier objections raised by the defendants and while the two parties, CBN and NDIC have acted in the general good by raising the capital base of banks in the country, and should not be affected to the detriment of the former employees, Investors King observed. 

According to a media report, “By revoking the banking licenses of the non-consolidated banks, the defendants interfered with the employment contracts of the bank workers, a contract which would ordinarily have run its natural course with the claimants paid their benefits at the end.

The banking institutions have been in the tussle with one another since the consolidation exercise of 2006 that led banks to recapitalise from N2bn to N25bn.

The banks did not meet the expected requirement for the recapitalisation requirements and their banking licenses were revoked by the apex which later placed the NDIC as the liquidator. This led the bank workers to sue the two organisations while they demanded their terminal benefits. 

The two defendants objected to different issues saying that they “were not the employers of the workers and the suit disclosed no cause of action against them.”

Over one thousand people had approached the court since 2018.