Ex-Guinness employee sues company for wrongful termination of appointment

A former employee of the Guinness Nigeria Plc has sued the firm’s parent company, Diageo, over what he termed wrongful termination of his appointment as a distributor manager.

The former employee identified as BrightNwosu took Diageo to the National Industrial Court in Port Harcourt, and demanded N200m as damages for the alleged unlawful sacking.

He joined in the suit the Area Manager of the firm in its Port Harcourt West branch, Chijioke Ebirinwa; Emeka Onuoha for Port Harcourt East; and the Head of Division, East Nigeria, Elvis Okafor.

The National Industrial Court fixed March 31, 2020 for the hearing of the matter.

Speaking with newsmen, a lawyer and representative of the Legal Aid Council, Benn Uzozie, said he was in court to seek redress over Nwosu’s dismissal from Guinness Nigeria Plc, adding that he believed that his client (Nwosu) would get justice.

Uzozie said, “We are in court because of what we call a conspiracy of silence of Diageo Company, London, the parent company of Guinness Nigeria Plc, against our client, a Nigerian. The kind of maltreatment meted out to our client cannot be done to any British employee.

“Here in Nigeria, you find most of these multinationals handling issues like this. We wrote to them; we appealed to them to resolve this issue. He made a complaint to them to resolve this issue. We exhausted all the local remedies within the Diageo network.

“But because of what we call conspiracy of silence, they buried all the complaints and that is why we are in court. We are before Hon. Justice Ogbuanya and I are sure that the court will do justice to it. We are just here because of the conspiracy of silence and nothing more. Our client’s appointment was unlawfully terminated and that is what we want the court to determine.”

He claimed that the termination of his client’s appointment did not follow Diageo’s procedure.