NICN - JUDGMENT
IN THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COURT OF NIGERIA
IN THE LAGOS JUDICIAL DIVISION
HOLDEN AT MAKURDI
SUIT NO NICN/LA/77m/2025
BEFORE HIS LORDSHIP, HON. JUSTICE (DR.) I. J. ESSIEN
DATE:21 July 2026
BETWEEN
GREENLIFE PHARMACEUTICALS LIMITED Defendant
RULING
This ruling is not based on any formal motion filed before this court. Rather it is post judgment ruling aimed at resolving a contending issue which arose out of the compliance with the directive of the court in the case of MR BARTHOLOMEW CHINEDU EZE VS. GREENLIFE PHARMACEUTJCAL LIMITED SUIT NO NICN/LA/287/2021 decided on the 21st January 2026. On the 10/3/2026 counsel address the court extensively on this issue to be resolved in this ruling. In the suit mentioned above, acting pursuant to reliefs 3 and 4 wherein the claimant sought:
3. A declaration that the confiscation of the original certificate of
Pharmacist Bartholomew Chinedu Eze, from the University of Nigeria
Nsukka, is illegal, unwarranted, wrongful and unconstitutional and
amounts to a detinue.
4. AN ORDER of this Honourable Court directing and mandating the
Defendant to immediately surrender to the Claimant his original
certificate in the custody of the the Defendant.
Ordered thus:
The defendant is hereby directed to hand over the Original Pharmacist Certificate of the claimant within 7 days from the date of this judgment.
This order was predicated on the fact that as part of the condition of employment, the claimant was required to deposit his original certificate from the University of Nigeria with the defendant. The defendant acknowledged the receipt of the original certificate of the claimant by a letter dated the 1/8/2016, tendered as Exhibit C2. The claimant attempted to return the certificate back to the claimant. The claimant disputes that what the defendant attempted to hand over is a laminated coloured photocopy which is not the certificate of the claimant. He posits that, that was not what was handed over to the defendant and which the defendant acknowledged receipt by Exhibit C2. The defendant attempted to bring the HRM or the officer who signed and acknowledgement of the receipt of Exhibit C2, who has since left the employment of the defendant to come and say what he received from the claimant as evidenced by Exhibit C1, but the officer refused for certain reasons which is also connected to the strained relationship between him and the defendant. In the message he sent to the director of the claimant wherein he refused to attend court to shed some light on this issue he stated ‘Which other academic document did I receive from staff in my capacity as the HR Manager of Greenlife Pharmaceutical Ltd. about 10 years ago apart from duplicate copies of credentials which did not even require my signature then’?
The defendant counsel has consistently argued that what the defendant attempted to hand over to the claimant which the claimant rejected was what the claimant deposited in Exhibit C2.
This Court is called upon to determine whether the coloured and laminated copy of the Pharmacy Certificate which this court has seen was what the claimant actually handed over to the defendant Human Resources Manager at the point of employment of the claimant. I have seen the Pharmacy Certificate which is the academic qualification of the claimant as a pharmacist. The certificate is what I may call a clone copy of the original. It is laminated. The laminating film attest to the age of the lamination. It is not a recent lamination. Which means that the document is not recently laminated. The Human Resources Manager in his message stated that what he received from employees of the defendant 10 years ago before exiting the employment of the defendant is the duplicate copy of the employee's certificate. He did not say he received the original. The claimant’s claim seem to be that the defendant lost the original copy of its certificate. If the original was lost, from where did the defendant produce the coloured and laminated copy from. Could it have been that it was when the original was submitted that the defendant produced a coloured copy of same and laminated it and kept it as a duplicate in case that original is lost? The claimant has not disputed the character of the certificate, he has not said that what he gave was unlaminated This would have raise question of how the defendant came about the laminated copy they have produced from their custody. The laminated certificate looks like the original with all the features of an original certificate. The film of the lamination is old which is evidence of the fact that the lamination was done a long time ago.
The issue for determination is whether the document in the custody of the defendant, being a coloured and laminated copy of the claimant's Pharmacist Certificate from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, is the same original certificate that the claimant deposited with the defendant as a condition of his employment, the receipt of which was acknowledged by the defendant vide Exhibit C2 dated 1st August 2016.
This issue lies at the very heart of the dispute between the parties. The claimant's case is that he deposited his original Pharmacist Certificate with the defendant upon the commencement of his employment, and that when the defendant later attempted to return a certificate to him, what was presented was not the original but a laminated coloured photocopy. The defendant's position, as discernible from the record, is that the laminated coloured document it produced from its custody and attempted to hand over to the claimant was the very certificate the claimant deposited, as acknowledged in Exhibit C2.
The starting point of the analysis must be Exhibit C2 itself. This is a letter dated 1st August 2016, emanating from the defendant, by which the defendant, through its then Human Resources Manager, acknowledged receipt of the claimant's original Pharmacist Certificate. The probative value of this document is considerable. It is an admission against interest, made contemporaneously with the transaction it records, and its authenticity has not been challenged by the defendant at any stage of these proceedings. By virtue of Exhibit C2, the defendant is bound by its own written acknowledgment that what it received from the claimant was the original certificate. The law is well settled that where a party makes a clear, unequivocal admission in a document, that party is estopped from resiling from the contents of that document in the absence of cogent evidence to the contrary. See Sections 131 to 133 of the Evidence Act, 2011. The evidential burden therefore falls squarely on the defendant to demonstrate, on the balance of probabilities, that the laminated coloured document it now seeks to return is the same original certificate it acknowledged receiving.
The defendant attempted to discharge this burden by seeking to call the former Human Resources Manager who signed Exhibit C2 as a witness. This was, in principle, a sound forensic strategy, for the former HR Manager was the person best placed to testify as to the precise nature and physical characteristics of the document he received from the claimant. However, the witness refused to attend court, citing a strained relationship with the defendant. The defendant did not apply for a subpoena to compel the attendance of this witness. Under Section 167(d) of the Evidence Act, 2011, where a party fails to produce evidence that is within its power to produce, the court is entitled to draw the inference that, had the evidence been produced, it would have been unfavourable to that party. The defendant had the means to compel the attendance of its former officer through the process of the court and chose not to do so. The court is entitled to, and does, draw an adverse inference from this failure.
What the former HR Manager did provide, by way of a message to the defendant's director, compounds rather than alleviates the defendant's difficulty. His words were to the effect that the only academic documents he received from staff in his capacity as HR Manager approximately ten years earlier were "duplicate copies of credentials which did not even require my signature then." This statement, far from supporting the defendant's contention that the laminated document is the original, tends to suggest that the defendant's own practice was to collect duplicate copies of credentials from employees, not originals. If that is so, then a serious question arises as to whether the acknowledgment in Exhibit C2 that the "original" certificate was received was a mere formality — a standard-form letter issued without careful verification of whether the document deposited was truly an original. However, this statement was not made on oath, was not tested by cross-examination, and constitutes a belated recollection made approximately ten years after the event. The law accords greater weight to contemporaneous documentary evidence than to subsequent oral or informal recollections, particularly where the maker of the subsequent statement has declined to submit himself to the rigours of cross-examination. I therefore accord greater weight to Exhibit C2 than to the former HR Manager's message, while noting that the message does not assist the defendant's case in any event.
Turning to the court's own physical inspection of the laminated document produced by the defendant, the observations made are instructive but must be carefully parsed. The document bears all the features of an original certificate. The lamination is not recent; the ageing of the laminating film is consistent with the document having been laminated and stored for a considerable period, which is consistent with it having been in the defendant's custody since 2016 or earlier. At the same time, I have described the document as a "clone copy of the original." The use of the word "clone" carries the implication that the document, while bearing a striking resemblance to an original, is in fact a reproduction albeit one of very high quality. This tension between the document's appearance and its characterisation must be resolved.
The resolution lies in a careful consideration of what the claimant himself said Through the submission of his counsel and, critically, what he did not say. The claimant counsel stated that the document the defendant attempted to return was not his original certificate but a laminated coloured photocopy. However, the claimant did not testify that the document he deposited with the defendant was unlaminated. This is a significant omission. If the claimant had deposited an unlaminated original certificate with the defendant, and the defendant later produced a laminated document, the natural and expected testimony from the claimant would have been that what he deposited was unlaminated. His silence on this point undermines the theory that the defendant created a laminated coloured reproduction of an unlaminated original. The court considered the hypothetical that the defendant might have produced a coloured copy of the original, laminated it, and kept it as a duplicate. This hypothesis was rightly rejected on the basis that the claimant never said what he deposited was unlaminated. If the defendant had engaged in such substitution, the claimant would have been the first to notice and testify to the difference in the physical form of the document.
Nevertheless, the claimant's rejection of the document is itself a piece of evidence that cannot be lightly dismissed. The claimant is the person who possessed the original certificate before depositing it with the defendant. He is the person most familiar with the physical characteristics of his own certificate. His assertion that the document produced by the defendant is not his original certificate, while not supported by specific testimony as to the physical differences between the original and the laminated copy, is consistent with the relief that led to the order for the return of the certificate. The question is whether this assertion, standing alongside Exhibit C2 and the other evidence, is sufficient to discharge the burden of proof on the balance of probabilities.
Having weighed all the evidence, I find as follows. Exhibit C2 establishes, as a contemporaneous admission against interest, that the defendant received the claimant's original Pharmacist Certificate. The defendant has not produced the witness best placed to explain what was actually received. The message from the former HR Manager, far from supporting the defendant, introduces the possibility that what was collected was a duplicate rather than the original, which in turn raises the question of what became of the original if the defendant's own practice was to collect duplicates. The defendant has offered no satisfactory explanation for the discrepancy between Exhibit C2 and the former HR Manager's recollection. The laminated document produced by the defendant, while bearing the features of an original on its face, looked like a clone copy. The claimant rejected this document as not being his original certificate. While the claimant's failure to assert that what he deposited was unlaminated, weakens one strand of his case, it does not extinguish it entirely, because the claimant's rejection of the document may be based on other characteristics perceptible to him as the owner of the certificate that are not apparent to the court upon visual inspection of a laminated document.
On the balance of probabilities, and taking the totality of the evidence into account, I find that the defendant has not demonstrated that the laminated coloured document it produced from its custody is the same original Pharmacist Certificate that the claimant deposited with it. The contemporaneous documentary evidence of Exhibit C2 establishes that the defendant received the original. The defendant has failed to produce the key witness, and the adverse inference drawn from that failure weighs against the defendant. The former HR Manager's own informal statement undermines rather than supports the defendant's position. This court's observation that the document looks like a clone copy, while not conclusive standing alone, is consistent with the claimant's assertion that the document is not the original. On these score I find that the coloured and laminated copy of the Pharmacist Certificate produced by the defendant is not the same original certificate that the claimant deposited with the defendant as acknowledged in Exhibit C2.
The claimant's right to the return of his certificate upon the termination of the employment relationship, or upon the directive of this court is beyond question. The defendant acknowledged receipt of the original certificate by Exhibit C2. When the claimant demanded the return of his certificate, the defendant produced a document that, as I have found, is not the original. The claimant rejected it. The defendant has not thereafter produced the original certificate. This constitutes a wrongful detention of the claimant's property, or, if the original has been lost, a wrongful failure to account for and return the chattel entrusted to the defendant's custody. The practice of employers requiring employees to deposit original academic certificates as a condition of employment is one that this court views with considerable concern. It is a practice that breaches all known rules and practice of engagement of an employee. An employee's academic certificate is the product of years of study and personal investment. It is a unique document that, once lost, cannot simply be replaced in the same form. The requirement that an employee surrender such a document to an employer as a condition of employment places the employee in a position of vulnerability and dependence that is inconsistent with the dignity of labour. That practice is not known in labour law. It is an unfair labour practice and must be struck down by the court.
However, the practical difficulty that confronts the court must be acknowledged. If, as circumstances suggests, the defendant may have lost the original certificate, the directive made in the judgment for the defendant to "immediately surrender" the original has become incapable of compliance. The court must fashion a remedy that is both just and practicable. In the tort of detinue, where the chattel cannot be returned because it has been lost or destroyed, the appropriate remedy is the value of the chattel together with damages for its detention. In this case, however, the claimant's original Pharmacist Certificate has a value that transcends mere monetary assessment. It is a unique document, irreplaceable in its original form, and essential to the claimant's professional practice and livelihood. Since the defendant is unable to comply with the order made by the court because the original certificate has been lost or is no longer in her possession, the defendant shall within 2 working days from the date of this ruling provide the claimant with a written undertaking to bear all costs and take all necessary steps to assist the claimant in obtaining a replacement certificate from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The defendant shall in addition pay to the claimant the sum of N6,000,000.00 (Six Million Naira) as damages for the wrongful detention and loss of the said certificate. The defendant shall fully comply with the directive of this court within the next 7 days from the date of this ruling.
This is the ruling of the court.
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Hon. Justice (Dr.) I. J. Essien
(Presiding Judge)
REPRESENTATION