University Of Ilorin Teaching Hospital Management Board & Anor V. Mrs. Abdulrahaman Yetunde Mariam (2016)

LawGlobal-Hub Lead Judgment Report – COURT OF APPEAL

BOLOUKUROMO MOSES UGO, J.C.A. (Delivering the Leading Judgment)

This appeal is against the judgment of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria in Suit No NICN/LA/356/2012 delivered on the 19th of June 2013.

In that Court, the respondent, a Principal Nursing Officer in the employment of the appellants, in her statement of facts, claimed against her employers, the appellants:

1. A Declaration that the refusal, failure, or neglect of the Defendants to facilitate her promotion since January 2010 till date as well as her subsequent suspension is unlawful, malicious, arbitrary and oppressive in the extreme on the footing of which she is entitled to be assuaged in damages.
2. A Declaration that her purported query and subsequent suspension by the appellants was malicious and hence null and void, of no effect whatsoever and must therefore be retracted by them.
3. A Declaration that it will be unjust, inequitable and indefensible in law to allow the appellants to delay and/or deny the promotion due to her since 2010 regard being had to the fact that she has passed the requisite promotion interview and was/is not culpable for any malfeasance

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incidental to such delay or denial.

4. An order compelling the appellants to reinstate her and to forthwith facilitate her due promotion from January 2010 when she passed the 2010 promotion exam, and to pay all the accrued income arrears thereof.
5. The sum of N50 million as aggravated and/or exemplary damages for the career stagnation or retrogression, financial misfortune, untold agony and emotional distress caused by the appellants unjustified delay and/or denial of the promotion due to the claimant since January 2010, as well as her illegal suspension.

Her complaint in the case was that she was being victimized by the appellants, her employers, by way of suspension and delay/denial of promotion because of what they perceived as the role she played, or did not play properly, as a senior staff in failing to detect an error in the Death Certificate she received on behalf of the Abegunde family which 2nd appellant issued in 2008 in respect of her late father who died under its management. It turned out that her family, led by her medical doctor brother, one Dr. Dele Abegunde, was not convinced that 2nd appellant was not negligent in its

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treatment of their father and so instituted against it in the same 2008 a medical negligence suit in the Federal High Court. In the trial of that suit which lasted between 2008 and 2011, the contents of the aforementioned Death Certificate became a major point in determining the appellants? negligence, for which the Court in its judgment of 22/07/2011 found 2nd appellant liable and awarded against it total damages of over Eight million Naira (precisely Eight Million, one hundred and seventy-three thousand, two hundred and thirty naira (N8,173,230.00) in favour of respondent?s family). The appellants were not happy with that defeat and proceeded, on 02/08/2011, just ten days after the judgment, to issue respondent a query asking her to explain what they deemed her aforesaid laxity. That is even as it was not anywhere suggested by them that she had any part in issuing the said Death Certificate or her father?s treatment. Respondent promptly answered the query and therein labelled the allegations against her ‘spurious?, a word the appellants claim to have found very distasteful. Meanwhile she also already had issues with the appellants

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over what she believed was the undue delay of her promotion to the next grade in her job, an Assistant Chief Nursing officer, which she claimed she was due for by Service practice since 2008 (the same year the Death Certificate and negligence issue started) and had even passed a promotion examination conducted by the appellants in 2010. On that, it is again common ground (and supported by Exhibit C6 dated 17th September 2010) that the appellants through their Chief Medical Director actually wrote to respondent after the examination informing her that she could not be considered for the 2010 promotion because there were no vacancies to accommodate all promotable candidates. That is again as respondent claims that some of her colleagues in her category that took the same 2010 promotion examination were in fact promoted to the next grade.

?In August 2011, the appellants, it is also common ground, again issued letters for promotion interview to officers in the respondent?s grade but bypassed her. Having waited for some time in vain for hers and the date of the examination fast approaching, she wrote to appellants for her own invitation letter but was

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still not given one and so missed the examination which was conducted on 9th August 2011. The results of that promotion exercise, it is undisputed, were released on 6th October 2011 but her name was omitted. She described the omission as ‘malicious and in bad faith, especially as it contained the names of her colleague nurses who were also denied the 2010 promotion. She claimed she had been diligent in her work and had on several occasions received commendations and even won awards for the unit she oversees as the charge nurse, the latter of which is not denied by the appellants. She therefore claimed to have been traumatized, shocked and suffered depression by the appellants? decision to deny her promotion. She claimed she was being so treated because of the suit her family instituted and won against the 2nd appellant and that the Medical Director of the 2nd appellant had always maintained that unless her family compromised the execution of that judgment she would never be promoted. All efforts on her part to make the appellants change their stance, including causing her solicitors to write to them, having failed, she said, she instituted the instant

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