Date Published: 05/12/11

NN24, The Famous Presidential Debate Cable Network sacks Staff, owes salaries

The problem of mismanagement in cable news channel, NN24 has claimed more casualties as the organisation has sacked six more staff who were unable to continue reporting at the office on a daily basis following the TV station’s inability to pay their salaries.

The Head of IT of the company’s office in Abuja confirmed that letters for the “termination of appointment came in for the affected people sometimes in the first week of May.”

The company is said to have earlier forced the exit of those who tried to organise staff to demand payment of owed salaries.

Investigations revealed that NN24 presently owes anything around eight months of salaries in addition to refusing to remit employees pensions and taxes to the relevant agencies even when it had deducted the amounts running into millions from its staff.

A staff at NN24’s office in Ikeja, Lagos said the situation is pathetic as those who are still with the company have now been reduced to beggars. “It is tough surviving under the present arrangement. We now have to go against the company’s policy on collecting gratification and brown envelop and management has a way of looking away. I understand the guys in Abuja are the greatest beneficiaries since that is where politicians dole out money.” The staff who does not want to be named for fear of victimisation said.

“But we thank God that recently they paid one month, even though I am still trying to understand which month it is, because this idea of paying me February when the previous months are being owed is just baffling.”

This source said the whole “noise” about President Jonathan not attending the debate leading to the elections was because of “blackmail gone wrong” as the management of the company seriously wanted to exploit the event to get “something tangible from the president instead of the peanuts that will come from dealing with any other official.”

Checks revealed that the station lost as many as four staff to rival TVC in just one day earlier this year, while others moved over to Nigeria TV news leader, Channels Television.

Presently, staff who have left NN24 are at a loss as they agonise about how to get their money. The staff quoted earlier said “I learnt that management is not bothered about those who have left, the thinking is that such people have no means of enforcing their rights.”

When tracked down, a former staff of the station refused to comment pointing out that saying anything could jeopardise the prospect of his eventually getting paid.

In several emails obtained, the MD of the Company and the HR Director opposed staff openly discussing the matter. A memo by the MD had said “ It is worthy to keep in mind that our situation is as a result of a huge funding gap from July till now without commensurate income or additional investments for the same period. And not as a result of mismanagement of income or resources of the company”

But in a matter of months another memo by the HR Director admitted that errors on the part of management were responsible for the sufferings of staff “ These difficulties that emerged as a result of mistakes and indecisions have put the company's highly rated and committed staff in a lot of personal difficulties. Management wishes to reemphasize that it has taken full responsibility of the mistakes, which were not intentional and we apologize in no quantifiable measure.”

The company had put many expatriate staff in the most expensive hotels in addition to frequently shuttling them across the globe.

However, in addition to Nigerian staff leaving the company, the expatriates brought in at the inception of the company have also left with one of them saying in an email ” please kindly direct any questions you have of the sort I've answered in the past to either Abba or to Tony Dara.   There is nothing I can do to help going forward.  I was profoundly disappointed at the lack of performance”

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