09/02/2022
DO YOU FEEL WRONGFULLY SACKED? GET A LAWYER!
By: Stephen Ubimago Esq
If there is any place in Nigeria where the Thrasymachean dictum, “Might is right,” is most prevalent, it is in the workplaces, especially in connection with Employer-Employee relations. Anecdotal data hitherto gathered indicate that no labour sector in the country is exempt in this regard.
Many Employers of labour in Nigeria are getting away with unfair labour practices---in fact, literally getting away with murder---because only few have the balls to call in aid the institutions of justice to put them in their proper place.
They violate the country’s labour laws and the Contracts of Employment they entered with the Employee with reckless abandon. It goes without saying that this trend of impunity is being fuelled by a number of factors, primary of which however are the fears of the unfairly treated Worker.
The labour market in Nigeria teems with the unemployed, graduates and non-graduates alike. Nigeria's unemployment rate since General Bihari assumed the presidency has steadily risen and currently stands at over 33%, the second highest on the Bloomberg global list. As such, the supply side of labour in the country far outnumbers demand. Consequently, the price of labour has crashed precipitously, with wages not only trending on the low territory, but verging on the abject, miserable and most oppressive.
Under this unflattering circumstances, the Worker has become not only readily dispensable, spiking his vulnerability and sense of insecurity as a result; he has also witnessed the countervailing increment in the wealth and power of the Employer over him---the power of a potentate before whom he shivers, knowing he’s keeping a job at his pleasure. He must swallow his oppressive ways with equanimity or with a whimper if he must protest, else he would be hauled back to the greater desperation of unemployment and even replaced in a heartbeat.
Some have argued that the low wages trend in Nigeria is not so much consequent upon the country’s bad economy, as it is arguably a deliberate scheme fed by the greed and slaver’s mind-set of most employers who, desirous of having the employee in perpetuity, keep him barely liquid and desperately dependent, acclimatized to subsistence.
As if not bad enough, some Employers wrongfully dismiss the Employee with scant regard for the Contract of Employment that spells out how either party to the contract may terminate same. In flagrant disregard of the said Contract, some Employers even dismiss the Employee without notice and without paying “salary in lieu of notice.”
The Employee is sometimes dismissed with his allowances unpaid, or without any severance benefit whatsoever. He is thus left dry in the lurch. He might have worked for donkey years with the Employer, barely able to eke out any savings from his miserable salary, when he's suddenly asked to go without any form of compensation.
This is commonplace in Nigeria amidst which most would only rue their helplessness with the timid refrain, “I lefam for God.” The oppressed swallows the oppression philosophically and indulges the oppressor with his pitiful assessment of his position relative to the Employer’s as comparable to that of a squirrel and a boa constrictor in a duel.
Scarcely does it occur to him hat despite his rather weak position relative to the oppressor’s or Employer’s, he still has remedy; that it’s because of circumstances the sort of which he find himself that the institutions of law, lawyers, and justice (the system of courts or arbitral fora) partly evolved in human societies to assist people in his kind of station.
But even when he finally decides to reach out to a lawyer, another layer of fear rears up to paralyse him: fear of a lawyer’s legal fee, which, according to some improvident folklore, is notionally prohibitive.
It should be stated that the problem here is not so much the lawyer’s legal fee or the oppressor’s power, as it is the fears of the oppressed that seem to be doing him in.
If the foregoing reads familiar and/or tells your story or that of an acquaintance, you're advised to seek out a lawyer and fight for your right. Justice hardly smiles at anyone who won’t fight. Even if you’re desperately indigent, that shouldn't be a bar. The Rules of Professional Conduct for Nigerian Lawyers allows for the lawyer to work out some contingency fee arrangement of sorts with you. He might even elect to act for you pro bono. The Cab Rank rule even forbids him from wantonly rejecting a compelling brief.
So, it's high time you staked a bet on a lawyer!
Stephen Ubimago is a legal practitioner with the Lagos-based Law Firm Vox Dei Attorneys. Questions relating to the subject discussed here may be forwarded to him via [email protected] or WhatsApp on +234 701 427 6231
