Godstime Simon
The issue of unavailability of accommodation for the common masses in Lagos State and the increasing authoritarian attitudes of landlords was once again exhibited in the incident that happened at the Hilltop Estate, located at the Aboru, Iyana-Ipaja.
The tenants went to the workplace, only to receive frantic phone calls from neighbours in other buildings that their roofs were being removed.
By the time they raced home, roofs and windows had been removed. The tenants said they were not given quit notice.
When our reporter got to the scene, the tenants were seen looking despairing at their furniture, while the cloud turned dark, with rain threatening to fall.
They had no idea what to do next or where to run for shelter.
One of the tenants, Mr Uzioma, a transporter, said: “I have been living in this place for the past 10 years and I have been paying to my landlord. My landlord is the son of the owner of the building. I have been paying him since 2018. He has been the one issuing receipts after payment. But then suddenly, he became mentally challenged. The sister started coming to collect the rent. The first time she met with us, she made it clear that she could not read nor write, insisting that we should pay her and that she would never deny collecting rent money from us. She started collecting rent in 2019 and as she promised, she never denied us.
“A tenant here, Mr Adeyemi, who came up early this year, said he would be the caretaker of this place, and the owner of the place introduced him to us, that he would be taking the role of the caretaker. Two months later, he came up again and said he was the landlord, so I told him that the owners of the building needed to introduce him to us as the landlord, as they did some months past. My neighbour paid N48,000 for his rent, but to date, Adeyemi had not issued him a receipt.”
Uzioma said that when Adeyemi turned landlord was asked about the receipt, he allegedly said that he thought the tenants had been paying rent for years without receipts.
Uzioma said that when it was time to pay his rent, he went to Adeyemi, and told him that he would be needing a receipt as proof of payment.
Adeyemi responded that he did not have a receipt and on hearing that, Uzioma said that he would not pay, promising to pay only after the caretaker must have printed receipts.
He said that Adeyemi then asked him to pay and that he would use part of the money paid to print a receipt to give to him.
Uzioma said that he paid N20,000, which was half of his rent, promising to balance immediately Adeyemi provided the printed receipt.
But till the unfortunate incident of the tenants’ rooftop being removed, Adeyemi was yet to print the receipt.
Uzioma further recalled: “The next thing he did, when I and Mr Monday met him on the receipt issue, was to start threatening us. He said that the building had three landlords and that the part we were occupying belonged to another person and that developers would be coming to take over it. We then asked to know our landlord, so that we can discuss it with them, but he refused to give us the information. We asked for the developer’s contact so that we could ask for more time, but Adeyemi still refused to give us the contact. Besides, our money is still with him. Last two weeks, his son came and started breaking the walls of the building where we live alongside some thugs. Today morning, my son called me that they came his morning, removing the roofs, without informing any of the tenants and unmindful of our furniture or where we would sleep.”
The tenants, knowing their rights had been violated, ran to the Esther Child Rights Foundation, a non-profit organisation.
The Executive Director of Esther Child Rights Foundation, Mrs Esther Ogwu, said that the rights of tenants had been infringed upon and that she would get her organisation’s lawyer to sue the landlords and developers.
Several attempts made to hear from Adeyemi were unsuccessful. When he was called, he told our reporter that the matter was not one to be discussed on the phone, promising that he would call our reporter to meet when he was already.
It has been three weeks and still counting and yet Adeyemi had refused to call to state his side of the story.
