When mechanical engineer Abimbola Olodude walked into the National Industrial Court of Nigeria in November 2023, he was fighting for what was right. After 12 years at HFGC Energy & Power Solutions Ltd, the Lagos-based energy firm kicked him out without warning.
The company had claimed it was downsizing and removed Olodude from its workforce with no severance, no pension contributions, nothing.
Olodude seemed to know better. The Nigerian labour law required due process for termination of the sort, and his employer had ignored it.
So he took them to court. For nearly two years, he waited. On February 17, the ruling finally came. The court ruled in his favour. But by then, Olodude was gone.
Festus Ogun, Olodude’s lawyer, confirmed his client’s death.
“Up until the point of his death, he was not sick. As his legal representative, we didn’t know of any illness, but the judgment had come a bit too late for him,” Ogun told FIJ.
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BACKGROUND: A CAREER CUT SHORT
Olodude joined HFGC Energy in 2011. He was not one to stir trouble, but when the company fired him on October 31, 2023, without following due process, he refused to let it slide.
His termination letter, titled “Re: Notice of Downsizing of our Operations”, thanked Olodude for his service but left him stranded. There was no severance package, no pension remittance and no explanation for the missing funds.
When Olodude checked his pension account, he discovered that the company had failed to remit deductions for three years.
Determined to hold the company to account, Olodude sued. His case, NICN/LA/324/2023, sought unpaid wages, pension contributions and redundancy benefits. He wanted the court to recognise that his employer had broken the law.
HFGC FOUGHT BACK
The company did not go down without a fight. It argued that Olodude was not entitled to redundancy pay since no formal negotiation had occurred. It also claimed it had paid him N61,347, what it said was his one-month salary in lieu of notice.
On the missing pension funds, HFGC blamed Olodude, saying he never nominated a Pension Fund Administrator (PFA), so the money couldn’t be remitted.
Olodude and his lawyers at FO Legal had receipts. Court documents seen by FIJ showed that Olodude’s actual monthly salary was N204,490, meaning the amount he received was barely a fraction of what he was owed.
More importantly, the law was on his side. The Labour Act required consultation before redundancy, and pension deductions couldn’t just disappear. Olodude and his legal representatives had waited for the court to confirm what he already knew.
COURT VERDICT BUT OLODUDE WAS GONE
The court ruled that HFGC Energy had unlawfully terminated Olodude’s employment.
S.A Yelwa, a judge in the National Industrial Court, found that the company had violated Section 20 of the Labour Act. The section mandates prior notice and negotiation for redundancy.
As a result, the judge declared his termination wrongful and ordered the company to pay his full one-month salary of N204,490, not the N61,347 HFGC had given him.
The court also ruled that HFGC had unlawfully withheld his pension contributions from February 2020 to October 2023. Under Sections 11(3) and 11(4) of the Pension Reform Act 2014, employers must remit both employee and employer pension contributions.
Since HFGC failed to do so, the court ordered them to pay the full outstanding amount with penalties for late remittance.
However, the court did not grant redundancy benefits, ruling that under Section 20(1)(c) of the Labour Act, such payments must be negotiated, and no such negotiation had occurred.
His demand for N50 million in damages for emotional distress was also dismissed. The court ruled that under Nigerian law, wrongful termination compensation is limited to what an employee would have earned if the termination followed due process.
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Olodude had won. But he did not live to see it.
We fought very hard for this matter since 2023. We, in fact, took this picture on November 28 2024 after court proceedings when this matter was adjourned for judgment. We all looked forward to today.— FESTUS OGUN (@mrfestusogun) February 17, 2025
His lawyer, now working to ensure his family gets the compensation, called the ruling bittersweet.
“Justice delayed is justice denied. Then it is our own position that a family member, especially the surviving wife, has the right to reap the fruits of this judgment, and we are working on that”. Ogun told FIJ on Wednesday.
The post He Won His Case but Not His Life. The Lagos Engineer Who Died on the Day Court Invalidated His Sack appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.