The National Industrial Court has dismissed a lawsuit challenging the termination of a former Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board Deputy Director, ruling that his dismissal for gross misconduct and willful disobedience of constituted authority was lawful, compliant with the board’s staff manual, and untainted by any connection to his whistleblowing activities, which had in any case been investigated and found to be baseless.
Justice Osatohanmwen Obaseki-Osaghae, sitting in Abuja, awarded N250,000 in costs against the plaintiff Yisa Usman in favor of JAMB, delivering judgment in a case arising from a July 2023 dismissal that Usman had challenged as unlawful and retaliatory.
The court found that Usman had been afforded fair hearing when JAMB issued queries to which he responded in writing, but that he had subsequently and by his own choice boycotted the formal disciplinary committee proceedings. The judge said fair hearing required no more than the opportunity to be heard, which had been provided, and that Usman’s deliberate absence from the committee stage had been his own election and did not constitute a procedural violation by the employer.
On the question of ministerial authority, the court rejected Usman’s argument that the Minister of Education lacked power to approve his dismissal in the absence of a JAMB Governing Board, noting that the same minister had approved Usman’s promotion to Deputy Director in 2017 under identical circumstances and that Usman had accepted that appointment without objection. The court said the minister’s authority in the absence of a governing board was statutory and explicitly provided for under the JAMB Act.
The court also addressed Usman’s whistleblowing claims directly, establishing through the evidence that his numerous petitions alleging corruption and financial irregularities by the JAMB Registrar and board, submitted to the EFCC, ICPC, and Ministry of Education, had been thoroughly investigated and the subjects completely exonerated, facts that Usman himself had admitted in his depositions.
