ABSTRACT
Unfair dismissal of employees under the Nigerian contract of employment and the security of the tenure of employment has become a major concern in employment relationships. This academic piece will focus on the nature of a statutory contract of employment in Nigeria, the statutory protection for employees in contracts with statutory flavour, the novel concept of constructive dismissal of employees, the international labour standards regulating termination of employment, the position of the labour Act and the Remedies available to an unfairly dismissed employee. Data collection for this project was gotten from primary and secondary sources, the primary sources includes, the Nigerian Labour Act, case laws, International Conventions and Treaties relating to employment that have been ratified by Nigeria. The secondary sources includes journals, articles, online materials and textbooks. A study and appraisal of this data revealed that, unfair dismissal still largely obtains in Nigeria as seen in a plethora of decided cases herein discussed. It is further recommended that the International Labour Organization standards be adopted fully to give more protection to the employee.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
The law and practice of determination of contracts of employment in Nigeria is employer friendly. The employer is free to determine the contract of employment of his employee for bad reasons or for no reason at all. This is in contradistinction with the law and practice across the world. This shows that the law and practice of determination of contracts of employment differ with those of other countries.
One fundamental weakness of the common law is its failure to recognise that an employee has a legitimate interest in job security. By entrenching the freedom of contract with the spirit of free enterprise translated into the employer’s right to hire and fire at will, the right of a workman to work is reduced to his right to be given notice of the termination of the contract or to payment of the agreed wage or salary in lieu of notice, without any other consideration.
Generally under the common law, employers can terminate their employee’s employment for good, bad or no reason at all notwithstanding that losing one’s job can be a catastrophe of great proportion. This remains the position in spite of the fact that high unemployment rates, threat of redundancy and general lack of job security place too much control with already
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