A former General Secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Mr. John Odah, has rejected an N8.5m severance package from the NLC.
Odah, in an August 9 letter to the NLC President, Mr. Abdulwaheed Omar, said the congress had not told him what the money paid into his Zenith Bank account was meant for.
Describing the congress’ action as strange, Odah said he only got to know of the payment when he requested for his statement of account from the bank.
He said the payment might be part of the move by the leadership of the NLC to effect “the termination my appointment as the General Secretary of the NLC, which you communicated to me in your letter dated May 24, 2011.”
Odah warned the NLC and its leadership against the resort to ‘underhand tactics’ as the issue of his removal as General Secretary had not been concluded.
His lawyer, P.A Akubo (SAN), had warned the NLC to withdraw the sacking of Odah or face a legal action after 14 days of the receipt of a letter entitled ‘Legal demand for the reinstatement of Comrade John Ejoha Odah, as General Secretary,” NLC dated August 10, 2011.
He said the tactics being adopted by the NLC would not succeed as they were not different from those used by employers of labour which were successfully resisted by the NLC.
Odah, who said he had paid the exact sum into the NLC account, urged Omar not to make any further payments into his account until the matter was resolved.
His letter to Omar reads in part, “I can however surmise that this payment is in furtherance of actions to give effect to the purported termination of my appointment as General Secretary of NLC, which you communicated to me in your letter dated 24th May 2011.
“I have deposited the same amount of N8,471,870.00 only into the NLC Zenith Bank Account..at GarkI.”
But the Acting General Secretary of the NLC, Mr. Owei Lakemfa, told our correspondent on the telephone on Sunday that the NLC deserved praise for paying the severance package to Odah, who, according to him, was sacked by the congress.
He said as a responsible organisation, the NLC needed not wait for a sacked employee to begin sleeping at its gate before getting his entitlement.
Lakemfa said that Odah had the right to pay the N8.5m into the NLC account or go to court .
He said, “If Odah says he is going to court, there is nothing new in it. He has been threatening to go to court for five months.
“In any case anybody who feels aggrieved has the constitutional right to go to court., If people don’t patronise the court, the court will become useless.”
http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art2011081516155846