The House of Representatives last week threatened to declare Mainstreet Bank hostile over its reluctance to comply with the lower chamber’s resolution to re-instate the 41 sacked staff of Afribank which it inherited. Honorable Moroof Akinderu-Fatai, Chairman, House Committee on Legislative Compliance expressed his reservations at the way the management of Mainstreet Bank refused to cooperate with the committee in its bid to resolve the labour dispute between it and the former Afribank staff.
The honorable observed that the managing director of the bank had never appeared before the committee despite several invitations sent to him and maintained that the committee decided to continue the intervention in the interest of peace and justice for the 41 sacked staff of the predecessor bank.
The bank’s position had been that it would only acquire the assets of the bank and reject all its accompanying liabilities, including the sacked staff who were expected to be reinstated, a stand which honorable Akinderu-Fatai finds unacceptable.
According to him, “If we cannot resolve this, we may be left with no other option than to report back to the House that they have refused to comply with the resolution and the House would regard Mainstreet Bank as being hostile to the parliament. This means that the bank should forget having anything to do with the parliament… the bank had insisted that it cannot reinstate the sacked workers unless the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, NDIC, endorsed the decision, but these agencies had informed the House that they had no such powers over Mainstreet Bank.”
