The 167 employees of Ecobank who were let off in 2023 have been released from any responsibility by the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions. Rep. Mike Etaba (APC-Cross River), the committee’s chairman, declared the claimants’ plea without merit when he rendered a decision on it Thursday in Abuja.
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In order to force the bank to pay all of their entitlements, the petitioners had already petitioned the committee. A draft agreement that the petitioners claimed the bank had made with the workers’ union served as the foundation for their requests.
Nonetheless, Mr. Kenneth Okere, the bank’s attorney, informed the committee that the bank had fulfilled all of its commitments to the impacted former employees. According to him, they received four months’ income plus their gratuities, one month’s salary in lieu of notice, and a year’s worth of health insurance.
According to him, the bank had also deposited 10% of each petitioner’s base pay, housing allowance, and transportation allowance into their retirement savings accounts, which were kept up to date by their respective pension administrators.
The bank had even gone above and beyond to provide them with additional benefits to which they would not typically be eligible, the attorney claimed. He informed the committee that the planned agreement’s lifespan was explicitly specified in one of its sections.
He stated, “The aforementioned proposed agreement was a one-time document that obviously addressed a specific situation and does not apply to them.”
Following confirmation from the petitioners that the bank had, in fact, paid the payments, the chairman rejected the case in his decision. Etaba praised Ecobank management for their actions toward the fired employees, stating that as the “house of the people,” they would not permit any Nigerian to suffer, regardless of status.
