A Comparison between Unfair Dismissal Law in Nigeria and the International Labour Organisation’s Legal Regime

Abstract

The law that governs cessation of a contract of employment occupies a position of considerable importance in any developing society. Before the third alteration to the Nigerian Constitution, cessation of contracts of employment was left to reside within the private law sphere and the decision to dismiss fell within the complete hold of management through management–initiated programs to determine when, how and why a contract of employment shall cease. The motive for cessation of the contract is of no relevance to the Nigerian labour law; while the ground playing field upon which distributive conflict between the employer and the employee strives is left in the private sphere and treated as immutable by the Nigerian labour law. However, total reliance on management-initiated programs to determine cessation of an employment contract has not been so reliable. During a global pandemic, it is seen that even enlightened employers can be tempted to transform employees from high-valued human resource assets to low-valued disposable commodity. To mitigate this, the courts have started to rethink this orthodox position held to be immutable; this has brought about the concept of unfair dismissal. The methodology adopted is the qualitative method. The paper focuses on the comparison between Unfair Dismissal Law of Nigeria with that of the International Labour Organisation’s legal regime.