The National Industrial Tribunal in Abuja has ordered the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) to reinstate its two top directors fired last year for launching investigations against Atiku Abubakar and Bola Tinubu.
Criticizing her dismissal at her ruling handed down on March 3, 2022, a copy of which PREMIUM TIMES saw on Thursday, Judge Rakiya Haastrup called it arbitrary and illegal.
The judge pointed out a series of breaches of due process and a violation of the right to a fair hearing of the two officials in the process that led to their dismissal in June of last year.
After declaring the dismissal illegal, null and void, the judge ordered the NFIU and its executive director, Moddibo Mamman-Tukur, “to issue a letter to remove and reinstate them in the service of the NFIU and restore all privileges, rights and positions.” occupied by the plaintiffs prior to their alleged dismissal by the defendants.”
Ms. Haastrup, the judge, also ordered them to pay “the plaintiffs’ salaries, allowances and all rights from the period of their alleged dismissal to the period of reinstatement.”
suit, trial
PREMIUM TIMES had reported how the financial intelligence agency previously suspended Mohammed Mustapha, its Associate Director for Intelligence and Investigation, and Fehintola Salisu, Associate Director for Compliance and Analysis, in August 2020.
The agency’s executive director, Mr. Hamman-Tukur, accused the duo of various wrongdoings, chief among which was that they wrote unauthorized memos to local and foreign authorities in an effort to launch investigations against Messrs. Abubakar ( Atiku) and Tinubu.
It is known that both Abubakar, former vice president of Nigeria and leading member of the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and Tinubu, former governor of Lagos state and national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), aspire to contest the presidential elections. of 2023.
This newspaper reported in June last year how the NFIU fired Mr. Mustapha and Ms. Salisu following a recommendation by the Appointments, Promotions and Disciplinary Committee (APDC) set up by the agency’s executive director to investigate the various allegations made in his against.
The two officials subsequently sued the agency and its executive director before the Abuja National Industrial Tribunal to challenge their dismissal. They defended their actions in their lawsuit filed on December 7, 2021, saying that they only responded to the foreign partner’s request when Mr. Hamman-Tukur was absent.
They argued that their dismissal was carried out by Mr. Hamman-Tukur alone in contravention of the law.
In their defense, the defendants urged the court to dismiss the lawsuit as allegedly academic and hypothetical, premature, and for failing to disclose a reasonable cause of action against them.
They also added that the plaintiffs, not having been properly employed by the NFIU after they were inherited from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that used to oversee the agency, lacked the legal right to sue.
In her sentence, the judge upheld the plaintiffs’ case and granted their seven sentences, including ordering their reinstatement. This was after the judge identified a range of violations in the NFIU’s disciplinary proceedings against them.
‘Sanction for faults not contained in consultation’
NFIU procedural violations, the judge said, included the fact that the NFIU disciplinary committee (APDC) found the plaintiffs guilty of violations not contained in the inquiries issued to them.
The disciplinary committee, according to the judge, found the plaintiffs guilty of negligence, breach of duty and insubordination “different” from the accusations made against them in the consultations made to them.
It added that the inquiries did not specify which provisions of the NFIU Act or the federal government’s Public Service Rules (PSR) were allegedly violated by the plaintiffs.
“The action of the defendants (NFIU and its executive director) in this regard is, to say the least, unconscionable, illegal and not in accordance with the principles of natural justice and so I hold,” the judge ruled.
‘Punishment not commensurate with punishment’
It also ruled that the dismissal sentence imposed on the plaintiffs was inconsistent with the allegations of negligence, dereliction of duty and insubordination of which they were said to be guilty.
Said crimes, said the judge, “are part of the behaviors that constitute misdemeanors and not serious or serious misdemeanors in the opinion of the accused.”
“To this is added the fact that the penalty for it is termination or even retirement and not dismissal as imposed on the plaintiffs,” the judge also said.
‘Failure to refer disciplinary complaints to FCSC’
The judge also held that since the NFIU did not have any conditions of service in existence, “then it is the provision of the Public Service Rules (PSR) that is applicable in disciplining claimants.”
He noted that under the PSR it was the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) that could take disciplinary action against complainants, while the agency’s executive director only had the power to initiate the process.
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He ruled out that “it was the FCSC that should have constituted the APDC.” “This will avoid a situation of bias in any disciplinary process against any employee.”
‘Illegal 10 month investigation’
Also criticizing the time it took for the APDC to complete its investigation, the judge said: “therefore, my conclusion is that the exercise of the disciplinary action by the accused, which took 10 months, much more than the stipulated time of 60 days, it was done in flagrant breach of the governing law and I maintain it that way.”
But the judge dismissed the plaintiffs’ claim that their right to a fair hearing was violated because the disciplinary committee’s invitation letter did not specify the reasons for a scheduled meeting with them.
The judge said that it was not necessary for the invitation letters to specify the reason for the scheduled meeting since they had previously been consulted and had sent their responses.