Gabriel Oyemike, the founder of the Kinetics Health & Fitness Centre Ltd., hired Obinna, a Lagos resident who wants to be identified by his first name, as a digital marketing specialist on April 25 and has refused to pay him his two months’ salaries.

The company is registered in Nigeria and the United Kingdom at different times but bears the same name. In Nigeria, it was registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) on June 16, 2010, and co-owns it with Gari Katiyo. In the UK, he registered it on February 18, 2024, and acts as sole director.

Per his employment letter dated April 24, Obinna’s employment was for an initial period of three months and renewable upon satisfactory performance. He was to report directly to the company’s founder and his monthly net salary was fixed at N300,000.

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“As a Digital Marketing Specialist, you will play a crucial role in shaping our website design, driving online sales, building brand awareness, managing our online visibility and providing guidance, and achieving business growth for and providing leadership to the Online Marketing Team,” a part of Obinna’s appointment letter summarised his job description.

A redacted copy of his employment letter.

Obinna said he was doing every assignment Oyemike gave him to do and reporting back to him. He also gave feedback on unfinished assignments.

“My work for the company has always been fully remote with occasional in-person meetings. It was not until May that I started working. I spent the rest of April attending virtual meetings with him and other team members as part of my onboarding process,” Obinna said.

“In May, I did some research and designed website content and forwarded them to him privately and to his website designer. Although none of them acknowledged the message, they both downloaded it.

“The documents contained social media strategies and website content. I was also supposed to create social media pages for the company. I only succeeded in creating an Instagram page. For LinkedIn, I needed his personal login access to create a company profile but he did not give me access to it.”

At the end of April, Obinna asked to be prorated for the days he worked in that month but Oyemike said he would only be paid on May 25.

“Payment is after one month of starting. So your salary will be next month. We are harmonising our pay day to be the 25th of every month,” Oyemike said on 30.

May ended but Oyemike did not pay Obinna his salary. Keep in mind that the founder had declined to pro-rate him for April.

“I heard that other staff members had been paid on May 25 but I did not get mine. So, I asked him for my salary on May 26 and he said he was trying to reactivate the company’s UBA account,” Obinna said.

Their WhatsApp chat records showed that Oyemike promised to pay the salary on May 27, but he failed to do so.

On June 2, the founder said that if the account did not become operational before the close of business, he would have to pay the employee through his personal account. Again, he failed to pay Obinna.

The next day, the employee messaged his employer that he was still waiting to get his May salary. In response, his boss renewed his hope, promising to pay the money before the day ended.

As usual, Oyemike did not send the money as promised. Obinna then resorted to sending a message to the team’s general group on the evening of June 3. Rather than pay Obinna, the founder removed him from the group.

Subsequently, Obinna said, Oyemike blocked his two lines on WhatsApp, effectively cutting him off from demanding his salary.

Without any termination letter, Obinna believed his relationship with the company was still active. He said, “He has neither given me a disengagement letter nor expressed any dissatisfaction with my performance. He never gave me any query to say my work was poor.”

‘I NEED AN APOLOGY BEFORE PAYING HIM’

Oyemike told FIJ on Saturday that there were only two conditions for Obinna to get paid.

“He must tender an apology for threatening to report me to the UK’s Home Office. He has to complete the work he failed to do,” Oyemike said on a WhatsApp call.

“What I told him to do, he has not done it. He only worked for a month. He thinks going to embarrass me on the WhatsApp group would get him his money. I told him that for doing that, I will delay his salary for two months. If he was remorseful for doing that, he would have apologised but he did not.

“There is what is called validation. When he worked with us, we had a little bit of a cash crunch. If you work in a place, they would ask your supervisor to validate the fact that you worked for that period before you could get paid. I have not validated his work.

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“His salary is N300,000. In my mind, I said I would pay him N150,000 in July and tell him that he must complete the work he was supposed to do in the first month before he could get the balance.”

Oyemike said Obinna did not create social media profiles for the company. He also denied refusing to release his LinkedIn access to Obinna.

When told that there was no clause in the employment agreement stating that he had to validate Obinna’s work before salary payment, the UK-based founder said that was his experience as a former banker in Nigeria.

When asked whether he had terminated Obinna’s appointment formally, Oyemike said, “How would I formally terminate the appointment of someone who was insulting me? He knows that his work has been terminated.”