The Presiding Judge, Owerri Judicial division of the National Industrial Court, his lordship, Hon. Justice Ibrahim Galadima has ordered RHAS Ltd. to pay one of its expatriate staff, Hanna Alcheikh, the sum of $84,500.00 at the prevalent CBN official rate representing his salaries from the year 2014 to 2016 within 30 days.
Justice Galadima faulted the company for its refusal to comply with the Court's earlier order to release the judgment to Mr. Alcheikh since October 2020, thus awarding N2,000,000.00 as punitive costs also payable within 30 days.
From the available facts, the claimant- Hanna Alcheikh, had submitted that the defendant company owes him salaries and other allowances for the months of May 2014 to April 2019, which summed up to $210,000 USD. He equally claimed $17,500 as his unpaid annual leave allowances from the year 2014 to 2018 and $21,000 as his unpaid gratuity, maintaining that all legal efforts at getting his entitlements proved abortive.
However, in the course of the trial, the company's counsel announced to the court that the company admits owing Mr. Alcheikh the sum of $84,500.00 as its overall liability for all the debts owed which represent his unpaid salaries, allowances, and other entitlements for those periods allegedly owed the claimant contrary to the claims made by him in court. The court entered judgment on the said admission and ordered the company to pay Alcheikh the said sum admitted, on or before 13/11/2020 but it failed to redeem its promise and instead sought for an adjournment to produce an interpreter knowledgeable in Arabic for the purpose of translating a document which was accordingly vital for their defense.
The defendant averred that it negotiated with the claimant and other creditors it owes, to 50% waivers or discounts on all debts owed, attributing its inability to pay Mr. Alcheikh for those periods, to the harsh economic downturn experienced by it and the failure by other companies and governments to pay their own liabilities to the company. It had urged the court to dismiss Mr. Alcheikh’s claims for being gold-digging and speculative.
In opposition, Alcheikh's counsel, N.J. Ubani, and C.C Eluchie, Esqs., iterated that the company failed to establish why the claimant should not be justifiably entitled to his unpaid salaries, allowances, and gratuity and urged the court to adjudge interest on the admitted judgment sum to their client's benefit in the overall interest of justice.
Delivering the judgment on 29/11/21, the presiding Judge, Justice Ibrahim Galadima found it odd and out of place that the alleged arrangement for the waiver of debts owed Mr. Alcheikh as salary, was never documented by the parties such that it would have been established that they both agreed to such compromise.
Justice Galadima however refused Mr. Alcheikh's claim for the sum of $210,000 as unpaid salaries from May 2014 to April 2019 for being materially unsubstantiated by evidence, having placed nothing before the court to clearly prove the amount he received in the past as leave allowances and failing to provide the terms of his agreement which supposedly gave rise to his right to gratuity either under statutes or the company's policies and guidelines on the rights of an expatriate to gratuity.
