The Court of Appeal sitting in Port Harcourt has granted disengaged workers of the Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency (RSSDA) permission to challenge a National Industrial Court decision that declined to compel the Rivers State Government to pay salaries and other entitlements which the workers say have remained unpaid for years.
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The workers, numbering about 100, have been locked in a prolonged legal battle with the state government over their employment and salaries after they were placed on indefinite suspension without pay in 2017.
Their latest move follows an October 18, 2021 judgment of the National Industrial Court in Port Harcourt which held that the Rivers State Government and the RSSDA were joint employers of the affected workers, that their indefinite suspension without pay was inconsistent with the terms of their employment, and that their employment remained subsisting until properly determined.
The Industrial Court also declared that the affected workers were entitled to salaries and other entitlements from February 2017 until their employment was lawfully brought to an end in accordance with their conditions of service. It nevertheless rejected their separate ₦500 million claim for compensation for alleged unfair labour practices.
Years later, however, the workers say they have still not received the money covered by the judgment.
Seeking to turn the declarations into actual payment, they returned to the National Industrial Court with enforcement proceedings and asked for an order compelling the state government to pay what they said had accumulated into more than ₦3 billion, with the figure continuing to rise because, according to them, their employment has never been formally terminated.
The National Industrial Court declined to make the enforcement order, reportedly on the ground that an appeal concerning the earlier judgment was pending.
That refusal brought the workers before the Court of Appeal.
Their counsel, Isa Saidu, told the appellate court that the application seeking permission to appeal the lower court’s decision had been filed on July 17, 2025.
Representing the RSSDA and Rivers State Government, H. N. Amadi, a Deputy Director in the Rivers State Ministry of Justice, did not oppose the workers’ application.
After hearing both sides, the presiding Justice, Elfrieda Williams-Dawodu, granted the workers leave to pursue their appeal against the National Industrial Court’s refusal to make the enforcement order.
The order does not itself direct immediate payment of the workers’ salaries. Rather, it clears the way for them to challenge the lower court’s decision and argue before the Court of Appeal that the earlier judgment should be enforced.
Speaking after the proceedings, Saidu said the workers’ frustration arose from the fact that the 2021 judgment had, in their view, remained unimplemented despite expressly recognising that their employment was still subsisting and that they were entitled to salaries.
“Since the October 2021 judgment, the Rivers State Government has not complied with that judgment,” he said.
According to him, because the earlier judgment contained declaratory reliefs, the workers subsequently filed another action in which the amounts they claimed were due were specifically calculated.
“Since the judgments were declaratory, we have now filed another suit with the amount due to them computed to be over N3 billion, and still running because the employments are not determined,” Saidu said.
He challenged the basis on which the Industrial Court refused the enforcement request, arguing that there was no substantive appeal pending against the 2021 judgment at the time.
“Now the lower court agreed with us, but they refused to make the declaration to compel the Rivers State Government to pay the money on the ground that an appeal was pending at the Court of Appeal; whereas there was no appeal pending because what they had was an application for leave to appeal,” he said.
The underlying dispute dates back to the workers’ suspension from the RSSDA.
The official 2021 judgment shows that the workers were issued letters titled “Temporary Suspension of Employment Due to Prolonged Lack of Funds to the Agency from the Rivers State Government,” with effect from January 17, 2017, and that their salaries were to remain frozen until funding was restored.
Justice F. I. Kola-Olalere, who decided the case at the National Industrial Court, held that the employment conditions presented to the court contained no provision permitting the workers to be suspended indefinitely without pay.
The court further found that both the state government and the RSSDA participated in employing the workers, paying their salaries and suspending them, making them joint employers for the purpose of the case.
The court, however, also held that the workers were not civil servants whose appointments enjoyed statutory flavour. Rather, it classified the relationships as ordinary master-and-servant employment governed by their contractual terms.
For the affected workers, the legal distinctions have done little to ease the personal hardship they say has followed nearly a decade without regular salary payments.
Saidu told journalists that the prolonged dispute had taken a serious toll on the workers and their families. He alleged that one of the affected workers had even taken his own life as a result of what he described as unbearable hardship. That account was made by counsel and was not independently established in the court materials reviewed.
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