Former Guinness Employee Sues Company For Wrongful Dismissal

Parent company of Guinness Nigeria Plc, Diageo, is being sued by an aggrieved former employee who claims that the termination of his job as a distribution manager of the company was wrongful.

Bright Nwosu, the plaintiff, took the company to the National Industrial Court in Port Harcourt, demanding N200 million in damages for his illicit layoff. 

In the suit are the company's Port Harcourt West branch Area Manager, Chijioke Ebirinwa, and for the Port Harcourt East branch, Emeka Onuoha, and Elvis Okafor, the Head of Division, East Nigeria.

The hearing is slated for March 31, 2020.

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Representative of the Legal Aid Council, Benn 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.”