Indications are that the over 10, 000 ex-banks staff who challenged their forceful retirement from active service at the court of law may reach an out-of-court settlement, The Nation has learnt.
The affected erstwhile bankers had appeared in court at the National Industrial Court in Ikoyi last Wednesday in their large numbers to press home their demand for payment of their retirement benefits valued at over N9.8billion.
The presiding judge Hon. Justice Mustapha Tijjani had ruled that the pleas could not be taken after the claimants’ counsels Messrs Dotun Onafowope and Daniel Omotilewa told the court that they would take interrogatories as they had evidential documents to present to the court.
Justice Tijjani subsequently adjourned the case of the next hearing to March 14-15th, 2019.
However, the claimants’ counsels, Mr. Dotun Onafowope andc had hinted in an interview with The Nation at the weekend that there is a possibility of an out-of-court settlement.
According to the duo of Onafowope and Omotilewa the presiding judge Hon. Justice Mustapha Tijjani gave this hint at the open court, when he asked the parties to the dispute to weigh the option of alternative dispute resolution mechanism (ADR) to end the 14-years-old- litigation.
Expatiating, the counsels told our correspondent that the judge is duty bound to encourage ADR, which is why her mooted the idea in the first place.
“The judge met the parties to the dispute and said there was a possibility of resolving the matter out of court hence he requested the parties to meet and reach a compromise ahead of next hearing slated for March,” the counsels said.
When The Nation broached the subject with Magnus Maduka, who chairs, the Incorporated Trustees of the Association of Ex-Staff of Non-Consolidated Banks of Nigeria, expressed confidence that if the out-of-court settlement would help to expedite the payment his members would welcome the development.
Recounting some of their harrowing experiences since losing their jobs without being paid their terminal benefits since 2006, the chairman of the ex-bank workers, Maduka, claimed that no fewer than 100 of the workers had lost their lives owing to the hard conditions they were faced with while struggling to get their terminal benefits.
“We were trying to explore the possibility of not going to court at all, these past years, believing that the CBN and the NDIC and the banks concerned would do the needful. But it does appear that we may have to wait forever and that is why we decided to take the matter before the court to get justice for all the affected parties,” Maduka said.
It would be recalled that 14 years after the Central Bank of Nigeria revoked the operational licences of 13 commercial banks for failing to attain the N25bn capitalisation threshold then introduced and enforced in 2006 by the apex bank, majority of the affected.
In a suit marked, NIC/LA/603/2016, filed through their lawyers, Messrs Joshua Oni and Omotilewa Daniel, the ex-bankers, who came under the aegis of the Incorporated Trustees of the Association of Ex-Staff of Non-Consolidated Banks of Nigeria, claimed that they were being jointly owed N9,166,424,276 as their entitlements, which they had been struggling to recover without success since 2006 when the banking sector reform took place.
The ex-bankers, in their suit, accused the Central Bank of Nigeria of acting contrary to the law in the consolidation exercise, adding that the apex bank reneged on its promise to ensure that the interests of the disengaged workers were protected following the withdrawal of the licences of the eight banks that they were working for.
The ex-bank workers are urging the court to declare that the NDIC and the CBN, which were joined in the suit as the first and second defendants respectively, had acted contrary to the law and prejudiced the ex-bank workers’ interests while entering into agreements with Ecobank, UBA, Skye Bank and Zenith Bank, to sell the assets of the eight banks.
The claimants contended that it was unlawful and wrong for the NDIC and the CBN to sell the assets of the eight banks to Ecobank, UBA, Skye Bank and Zenith Bank, without also transferring the liability of paying the terminal benefits of the disengaged bank workers to Ecobank, UBA, Skye Bank and Zenith Bank.
The ex-bank workers said they would have fought hard and ensured that their terminal benefits were paid before the “purported liquidation” was carried out if not for the undertaking by CBN, which, they said, gave them full confidence as to the sanctity of their terminal benefits.