NATURAL JUSTICE IN EMPLOYMENT TERMINATION: AN APPRAISAL AND CASE FOR REFORM IN NIGERIA

The doctrine of natural justice, comprising the rule against bias and the right to a fair hearing, enjoys formal recognition in Nigerian law. Yet, its application to the termination of contracts of employment is marked by a selectivity that is constitutionally and normatively indefensible. It operates robustly in favour of public sector employees whose employment carry a statutory flavour, while leaving the vast majority of Nigerian workers, those who are employed in the private sector under ordinary contracts of service, without procedural protection against arbitrary dismissal. This research found that this current state of affairs, is the product of legislative omission, judicial conservatism, and institutional under-investment, rather than any principled feature of the doctrine itself. It interrogated the statutory flavour doctrine, the unresolved constitutional question of the horizontal application of section 36(1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, and the stare decisis conflict generated by the National Industrial Court of Nigeria's progressive invocation of ILO Convention No. 158 against the holy grain of the Supreme Court’s authority. Through a comparative lens drawing on England, South Africa, and Ghana, this study demonstrated that the challenges confronting Nigeria have been resolved in comparable jurisdictions through targeted legislative intervention and institutional reform. It concluded with a set of reform proposals: legislative, judicial, and institutional; reforms that are capable of transforming natural justice from a privilege of the few into a genuine and universal protection for all Nigerian workers.