Court refuses to grant fresh order against labour’s planned strike

The National Industrial Court of Nigeria in Abuja on Monday
rejected a request for a fresh order stopping the organised labour
from embarking on its planned indefinite strike scheduled to
commence Tuesday.

The court presided over by Justice Sanusi Kado also refused to
grant a prayer for an order to compel the government to immediately
commence the process of adopting N30,000 as the new national
minimum wage.

Justice Kado said it would be unnecessary to make another order
stopping labour from embarking on the planned strike having earlier
made a similar one in a case brought to the court by the Federal
Government last Friday.

The Federal Government had filed its suit following the threat
by the organised labour, comprising the National Labour Congress,
the Trade Union Congress, and the United Labour Congress, to embark
on strike if its demand for increase in the national minimum wage
from N18,000 to N30,000 was not met.

Contrary to the labour’s demand, the Federal Government said it
could only pay N24,000 as minimum wage and the state governors
under the aegis of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, had stuck to
N22,500.

The lingering dispute between government and the labour prompted
the Federal Government to seek and obtain the court order stopping
the strike last Friday.

But the fresh ex parte application seeking to stop labour from
embarking on the strike and to also compel government to commence
the process of paying the N30,000 minimum wage was filed by a civil
society group, Kingdom Human Rights Foundation International.

The group’s lawyer, Mr. Okere Nnamdi, at the Monday’s
proceedings, informed the court that he had filed his client’s ex
parte motion alongside other processes on November 1.

He urged the court to grant the prayers, including the one
seeking an order of substituted service of the court processes on
the governors joined as the 10th to the 45th defendants in the
suit.

But the judge immediately cut in, asking the lawyer if it would
still be necessary to proceed to hear the application, in view of
the Friday’s order made by the same court.

Okere conceded that he was aware of the order made by the judge
on Friday.

But he insisted that his ex parte motion was different from that
of the Federal Government, save for the prayer seeking an order
stopping the planned strike, which is contained in both
applications.

He said two prayers contained in his motion seeking an order of
substituted service of the court processes filed in the case on the
36 state governors and the one seeking an order compelling the
federal and state governments to commence the process of paying the
N30,000 minimum wage differentiated his motion from that of the
Federal Government.

Responding, Justice Kado said an order of interim injunction
could only be granted if there was an urgency, there was the need
to preserve the subject matter of the dispute and the defendants
could not be served.