1999 CONSTITUTION AND THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COURT
The Senate last week Wednesday passed the bill for an Act to alter the 1999 Constitution to establish and list the National Industrial Court as a Superior Court of Record in the Constitution. The House of Representatives had earlier in the year also passed the bill for an Act to alter the 1999 Constitution for the same purpose. By this development, the process of elevating the status of the National Industrial Court to a Superior Court of Record and recognized as such by the Constitution has scaled the major and most fundamental hurdles.
The National Assembly will now have to convene a harmonization conference to resolve the few areas of divergence in the Act passed by both chambers, after which the harmonized version will be transmitted to the 36 State's Houses of Assembly for concurrence by at least two thirds of the State legislatures for the amendment to take effect.
This historic development in the life of the 32 year old specialized court, is the culmination of four years of struggle and intensive campaign by stakeholders especially the Judiciary, the Bar, Labour and the National Assembly to ensure that the National Industrial Court takes it rightful place in section 6 of the 1999 Constitution which vests the judicial powers of the federation in the courts listed therein, and referred to as Superior Courts of Record.
No Country aspiring to develop its economy has succeeded without a stable mechanism for settling labour, employment and industrial relations matters. This is even more crucial in a country like Nigeria that is in dire need of foreign investments. No reasonable foreign investor would like to invest in an economy where the relationship between the employer and employee is not cordial or peaceful or where mechanisms for speedily resolving labour and industrial relations matters, when they arise, are put in place.
The National Industrial Court was therefore created to handle special matters which are connected with economic growth, industrial relations development, peaceful co-existence between and among labour and employers of labour as well as government. The establishment of the National Industrial Court was one of the major milestones in the 1976 labour sector reforms which culminated in the promulgation of the Trade Disputes Decree of 1976. The 1963 Republican Constitution of Nigeria was to be accordingly amended to reflect the existence of the National Industrial Court. By sheer inadvertence the Court was omitted from the list of Superior Courts of Record under the 1979 Constitution. This omission was cured by the promulgation of the Trade Dispute (Amendment) Decree No. 47 of 1992 wherein the Court was declared a Superior Court of Record with exclusive Jurisdiction over Trade Disputes, inter and intra union disputes.
Unfortunately, the Federal Military Government again omitted to include the Court in Section 6(5) of the 1999 Constitution. It was for this reason that the National Assembly took steps to cure the fundamental defect by enacting the National Industrial Court Act of 2006 which re-established the Court as a Superior Court of Record and repositioned the Court to function as an effective tool for trade dispute resolution to meet the emerging challenges of labour and industrial relations. The strengthening of the Court by the 2006 Act provided the impetus for the unprecedented transformation of the Court.
From a decrepit twin-duplex court building in Victoria Island, Lagos, which served as the only physical presence of the Court nationwide, the Court has since 2003 metamorphosed into eight (8) state- of - the-art, purpose-built Court complexes in the eight divisions of the Court spread across the country, with the building of the permanent Headquarters of the Court located at the premises of the former Court of Appeal in Area 3, Garki, Abuja.
The Court which has a President and Nine Judges has since then been contributing effectively to the resolution of trade disputes and industrial relations matters in the country. It has also helped in rekindling foreign investor's confidence in the industrial relations stability in Nigeria. All these are required to meet the goals of vision 20:2020.
Notwithstanding the progressive developments brought about by the 2006 Act, the Supreme Court in the recent case of National Union of Electricity Employees V. BPE gave a decision to the effect that the National Industrial Court must be expressly and directly included in section 6(3) and 6 (5) of the 1999 Constitution in order to enable the Court to enjoy the status, jurisdiction and powers of a Superior Court of Record.
The effect of the Judgment was to make the NIC subordinate in jurisdiction to the High Court and indeed other Courts previously considered to be of coordinate jurisdiction with the National Industrial Court. This, no doubt, will create a lacuna in our legal system and justice delivery. It will also give room to conflicting decisions, uncertainty and undependability arising from 36 High Courts of the various states and the FCT interpreting labour and industrial relations matters. It will also encourage forum shopping. Moreover, these regular Courts are already overburdened by an avalanche of diverse matters scrambling for attention.
It is gratifying that the National Assembly wasted no time in taking up this challenge and moved with unprecedented speed to amend the constitution to establish the National Industrial Court as a Superior Court of Record in the Constitution. Members of the National Assembly must be commended for this bold initiative as by so doing, they have restored confidence in a strategic and specialized court in the Federal Judiciary. By the passage of the Act, the National Industrial Court has been strengthened and repositioned to deal effectively with all Labour and Industrial Relations Matters, with the hope that more litigants whose rights have been abridged will find access to the Court, thereby reducing the incidence of strikes and lockouts. According to the Senate President David Mark, with the amendment, the National Industrial Court is better placed to discharge its duties adequately, especially in resolving the numerous outstanding industrial issues in the country.
With the landmark achievements of the National Assembly, the coast is now clear for the National Industrial Court to forge ahead with its repositioning drive in ensuring expeditious resolution of disputes without fear or favour, installation of ICT equipment, opening of more Judicial Divisions, training and re-training of its Judges and support staff, and compliance with international best practices in the resolution of labour and industrial relations matters.
To sustain the tempo of the amendment process, it is expected that both Chambers of the National Assembly will without delay produce a harmonized copy of the legislation for transmission to the State Houses of Assembly.
It is also expected that the states which have of recent experienced quite a dose of industrial disputes in various critical sectors of the economy will act expeditiously to give its support just as they did during the first and second alterations of the constitution.
It is therefore hoped that the State Assemblies whose approval by two third's resolution is required for the amendment to become a reality will share the same enthusiasm and understanding and grant an overwhelming concurrence to the legislation.
By Christian Odion a Public Affairs Analyst