The National Industrial Court, Abuja, on Thursday refused to grant an injunction, barring the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) from conducting any recruitment exercise.
The suit to stop further recruitment was filed by Simon Galadima, Charles Otaka, Faith Azizi, and 579 others, who were all former staff of the Service.
They have prayed the court to compel the board of the NIS not to approve any recruitment, until they were all reinstated back into the Service.
The affected people were those employed into the Service in May, 2015, which recorded incidents of stampede nationwide.
Sveral people lost their lives in most part of the country in the first recruitment exercise of NIS in 2015, but the families of those affected were compensated.
In his ruling, Justice Sanusi Kado, refused to grant the injunction, as the NIS board on which the injunction was sought, was not party to the suit which the claimant filed before the court.
According to the judge, the injunction is supposed to be against the board of Nigeria Immigration Service and not the Immigration itself based on the evidence before the court.
The judge said that, the claimants, led by their counsel, Mr Daniel Zhidu did not lay down ingredient on which the injunction is to be granted.
“It will be fruitless to make an order against a party who is not before; the court does not have jurisdiction to grant such an injunction; for a court to make order against a party, such party must be before the court.
“It will amount to constitutional breach of right of a party if such application is granted.
“ From the totality of evidence, the balance of this case is not on the side of the claimants,’’ he said.
Kado refused the application and adjourned the case until March 19.
Zhidu, who spoke to journalists outside the court, said that the claimants would join the NIS board as a party to the suit before the next adjourned date.
“The board will be joined as a party to the suit before the next adjourned date; this will allow the court to hear the matter on merit.
“Our basic claim in this matter is that the claimants should be re-engaged to their employment, their salary arrears should be paid to them.
“As it stands now, they are still legitimate staff of NIS because they were not properly dismissed, there is a laid down rule that was supposed to be followed before dismissing someone from service.
