NLC accuses govt, employers of weaponising court orders against workers

By Victor Ahiuma-Young

The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has accused employers and authorities institutions of weaponising tribunal injunctions to suppress the law rights of Nigerian workers and their unions.

NLC President, Joe Ajaero, made the accusation successful Abuja portion delivering a goodwill connection astatine the 2025 Public Lecture of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria, NICN, themed “Labour Justice and Labour Law Education.”

He expressed the NLC’s heavy interest implicit what helium described arsenic the increasing misuse of injunctions and ex parte orders by employers and governments to stifle morganatic national activities and weaken the labour movement.

He said: “A healthy, harmonious, robust, and productive concern relations abstraction is the bedrock of nationalist development. Central to maintaining this is simply a fair, impartial, and businesslike adjudicatory process.

“For this to beryllium achieved, it is imperative that cardinal stakeholders wrong this process, peculiarly the judiciary, person a heavy and nuanced knowing of the actors and their science successful the concern relations sphere: their aspirations, their strategies, their morganatic tactics, and their peculiar challenges. This knowing is what enables the making of balanced and equitable decisions that uphold justice.

“It is truthful our steadfast content that the judicial process, particularly nether the ineffable mandate of the National Industrial Court, indispensable not beryllium utilized to further the emasculation of workers and their organisations. On the contrary, it indispensable beryllium deployed arsenic a shield to support the anemic and susceptible idiosyncratic from the paws of unconscionable employers. This is the halfway of your Lordships’ ineffable mandate.

“It is successful the airy of this that we indispensable code a increasing and profoundly disturbing challenge: the use, and often misuse, of injunctions by employers and governments to stifle workers’ law rights to associate, assemble, and clasp an sentiment and the pliant disposition of immoderate of the judges. The haste with which these injunctions are sought and granted to halt workers from realising their morganatic objectives has go a important impediment to concern harmony.

“We are compelled to ask: Why does it look that it is lone the authorities and employers that are hastily granted specified injunctions by the NICN? This inclination requires urgent remediation if we are to marque immoderate meaningful advancement towards existent labour justice.

“Furtherance to this profound interest with a increasing inclination that threatens harmonious concern relations is the propensity for one-sided injunctions and ex parte orders from the NICN, astir exclusively successful favour of the authorities and employers. These orders, often obtained successful haste, are routinely utilized to truncate the morganatic activities of workers and their unions. This judicial tool, meant to sphere the presumption quo, has been weaponized to emasculate labour and tilt the equilibrium of powerfulness decisively and unjustly against the workforce.

“Furthermore, we observe a troubling one-sidedness successful the judicial exertion of Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution. While the close of individuals to beryllium to the governmental enactment and religion of their prime is vigorously protected, the correlative close to beryllium to the commercialized national of one’s prime appears to beryllium treated with little judicial fervour.

“The NICN, arsenic the specialized tribunal vested with the jurisdiction implicit our labour laws, indispensable instrumentality cognizance of this law proviso successful its entirety and present justness successful a accordant manner, affirming that the state of relation is arsenic cardinal successful the workplace arsenic it is successful the polling booth oregon the spot of worship.

“We telephone connected the National Industrial Court to emergence to its historical work arsenic the guardian of our nation’s concern relations sector. We impulse the Court to not lone adjudicate disputes but to actively support the delicate equilibrium of powerfulness indispensable for societal dialog to thrive.

“My Lords, the scales of justness indispensable beryllium balanced, not tilted. When the shield of injunction becomes a sword against the worker, the precise cloth of Labour Justice is torn. We indispensable ask: Justice for whom?

“It is besides important that we gully the attraction of the NICN to the request for lawyers wrong the employment relations abstraction to beryllium much schooled connected the tenets of concern relations and wide labour administration. There is simply a request to capable the palpable cognition spread that exists wi...