Air Peace Drags NLC, TUC to Court
Nigerian airline, Air Peace has filed a 1.7 billion naira lawsuit against the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) in Lagos State’s Federal High Court over an alleged disruption of its operations by the unions and its officers.
According to Order 28 Rules 1 and 2 of the Federal High Court (Civil Procedure) Rules, 2019, Order 6(6)(b) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), Order 6(6)(b) of the 2019 Constitution, and the court’s inherent jurisdiction, the lawsuit was filed before the court.
Also joined in the suit as defendants were the President of NLC, Joe Ajaero, the President of TUC, Festus Osifoh, Emmanuel Ugboaja, and Nuhu Toro.
Given the highly sensitive nature of aviation generally and in particular in the current environment of pervasive fear of insecurity over long-distance travel within Nigeria by other modes of transportation, Air Peace requested in the lawsuit that the court make a “declaration that the defendants’ calculated precipitation of grounding all the plaintiff’s flights throughout Nigeria for the sole reason that it is responsible for the majority of air-passenger and goods fli
The airline also requested “a perpetual injunction restraining the defendants, by themselves, their agents, servants, privies, or otherwise, howsoever, from repeating or continuing the acts of intimidation and coercion against it” from the court.
According to documents submitted to the court by Air Peace through its attorney, Chijioke Okoli (SAN), a raucous mob invaded the Murtala Mohammed Airport, Ikeja, Lagos, and the Murtala Mohammed Airport Terminal 1 (MM1) premises on May 3, 2023. This effectively disrupted their work by disorganizing and upturning tables, unplugging, and pushing away desktops and personal computers.
In addition, Air Peace claimed that it was immediately obvious from the songs they were singing and the commands that the apparent leaders were shouting during the disruption that the mob responsible for the disruptive scene was made up of NLC and TUC members.
Some of the defendants engaged in violent altercations, injuring some of Air Peace’s patrons and employees, who expressed their annoyance at the disruption and frustration of their travel plans by the defendants’ antics.
The airline added that the defendant’s actions had unavoidable repercussions on its operations in other airports across the nation, including the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport in Abuja and the Sam Mbakwe Airport in Owerri, neither of which could accommodate the plaintiff’s scheduled flights.
The airline claimed: “Lagos is the operational hub and nerve center of the airline’s operations, and a direct consequence of the defendants’ malicious and unlawful invasion of its work areas and offices and forcible prevention of its functions, as detailed above, was the cancellation of its flights billed for different destinations.”
“Several Air Peace staff members were physically assaulted and received bruises, which caused psychological trauma, hospital visits for treatment, and the need for some of them to be excused from work for a few days while they recovered.”
In addition to the monetary losses, Air Peace said that it had also experienced severe damage to its brand name, both among the general public and its investors as well as its flying customers.
