Employers used to treat termination as a commercial decision with a contractual price: give the notice, pay in lieu, move on. Before the National Industrial Court, that assumption has not been safe for some time. The Court applies standards — fairness, process, and increasingly international best practice — that go well beyond the four corners of the employment letter, and employers who have not adjusted keep losing cases they expected to win.
The contract is the floor, not the ceiling
A clean contractual right to terminate on notice remains important, but it is no longer the whole story. The Court looks at how the termination was carried out: whether a reason was given where one was required, whether the employee was heard, whether the organisation followed its own stated procedures. The result is that the process of dismissal is frequently more decisive than the right to dismiss.
By the time a dismissal reaches the Court, the case is usually decided by what is in the file — not by what is argued in the room.
Why the handbook decides cases
An employee handbook or HR policy that promises a disciplinary procedure creates an expectation the Court will hold the employer to. Skip the warning, the hearing or the appeal step that your own handbook promises, and the dismissal can be found unfair even where the underlying reason was sound. The document drafted to protect the employer becomes the instrument that defeats it.
Building a defensible file
The dismissals that survive challenge share a pattern. There is a documented reason. There is evidence the employee was told the case against them and given a chance to respond. There is a record that the organisation’s own procedure was followed. And there is consistency — the same conduct treated the same way across the workforce. Each element is ordinary. Together they are the difference between a defensible decision and a damages award.
For senior employees
The same standards cut both ways. A senior executive dismissed without process, or in breach of the employer’s own policies, has a real claim — and the strength of it usually turns on the same documentary record the employer failed to build.
The shift in posture
The practical lesson is not that termination has become impossible — it is that it has become a process, not an event. Employers who treat exits as procedures to be documented, rather than decisions to be announced, keep their outcomes. Those who rely on the old contractual instinct keep meeting the Court.
This note is general commentary on Nigerian legal practice and does not constitute legal advice or create a lawyer–client relationship. Outcomes depend on the specific facts and the applicable law at the time. For advice on a particular matter, speak with the firm.
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