Reps panel absolves Ecobank of any liability to 167 sacked workers

The House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions has absolved Ecobank of any liability toward the 167 members of staff of the bank laid off in 2023.

Chairman of the committee, Rep. Mike Etaba (APC-Cross River), who ruled on a petition by the claimants on Thursday in Abuja, said that it lacked merit.

The petitioners had earlier approached the committee to compel the bank to pay all their entitlements.

The petitioners had based their demands on a proposed agreement they claimed the bank had entered with the workers’ union.

However, counsel to the bank, Mr Kenneth Okere, told the committee that the bank had discharged all its obligations to the affected former staff members.

He said that a one year medical insurance was given to them, one month salary in lieu of notice as well as four months salary and their gratuities.

He said that the bank had also paid 10 per cent of their basic salary, housing and transport allowances to each petitioner’s retirement savings account maintained by their individual pension administrators.

The counsel added the bank had even gone out of its way to give them other things they were not ordinarily entitled to.

He explained to the committee that a section of the proposed agreement clearly stipulated the lifespan of the document.

“The said proposed agreement was a one-off document that clearly dealt with a particular situation and does not apply to them,” he said.

In his ruling, the chairman, after confirming from the petitioners that the payments had, indeed, been made by the bank, dismissed the petition.

Etaba commended Ecobank management for the gestures extended to the sacked staff members, saying that as the ‘people’s house’, they would not allow any Nigerian to suffer, irrespective of status.