The National Industrial Court sitting in Lagos has fixed December 17 and 18 to try the suit initiated by over 1,000 former bank workers affected by the recapitalisation exercise in 2006.

The defendants in the suit are the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC).

At the proceedings on Tuesday, the court was informed that one of the defendants, the NDIC, was not present or represented by its counsel.

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The defendant’s lawyer was said to have sent in word that he was stranded in Abuja.

Although the court was not happy about the development, it granted another adjournment to enable the defendants to file their reply to the interrogatories filed earlier by the former bank workers.

On the other hand, the other defendant – CBN – particularly asked the court for a short time to file its reply to the interrogatories.

The apex bank explained that it needed time to access its archives spread all over the country, in order to come up with an appropriate response to the interrogatories.

Reacting to the adjournment on behalf of his colleagues, chairman of the former bank workers, Magnus Maduka, reiterated their commitment to pursue the case to a logical conclusion to ensure that their terminal benefits and allowances were paid.

Interrogatories, also known as requests for further information, are a formal set of written questions by one party and required to be answered by another party or parties in a suit, in order to clarify matters of fact and help to determine in advance what facts will be presented at the trial of a case.