- ‘My family now sleeps in the passage due to her wickedness’
- I owe no one any explanation for my action – Landlady
The trauma of the ill-treatment Mr. John Idimeh and his children allegedly suffered in the hands of their landlady would remain with the family for a very long time.
They least expected the landlady to take such an action against them, especially since they had not defaulted in paying their rent.
But on this fateful day, the family of six got back home in the evening to be confronted with a shocking development as they opened the door into their one-room apartment. On entering the one-room apartment, they found the roof gone and their personal belongings floating on a pool of water that their room had become.
According to them, after they left for work that morning, the landlady had allegedly invited a carpenter to break into their apartment to remove the roofing sheets and the ceiling boards, leaving their personnel belongings to be destroyed by the elements of weather, specifically the rain, which fell for long hours on that day.
Of course, there had been an earlier verbal disagreement between Idimeh, the head of the family and the landlady. But nobody expected the action taken by the old woman.
Our correspondent gathered that trouble actually started for the Idimeh family living at number 50 Olabisi Olayetan Street, Igando, Lagos, when the owner of the apartment, Alhaja Ajalatu Oye, gave a three-month notice to quit her property, even when their rent had yet to expire.
Idimeh, who claimed that his rent would not expire until December 2017, said he made efforts to appeal to the landlady to extend the quit notice to six months to enable him source for funds to secure another apartment. But the response of Alhaja Oye to his request, according to him, was the unexpected removal of the roofing sheets covering his apartment at a time when it was raining heavily and he and his family members had gone to their various places of work.
Alhaja Oye had waited until we left for work before she hired a carpenter, who broke into our apartment, and removed all the roofing sheets and ceiling boards under the heavy rainfall, which began on Friday and lasted till Sunday
It was learnt that Alhaja Oye inherited the house after the demise of her former husband in 2014.
Following this development, the tenants of the house, according to sources, began to have series of problems with the new owner said to have inherited some rooms in the property. They accused her of introducing different bills to be paid by the tenants living in her rooms.
It was also learnt that immediately she inherited the rooms from her late husband, she raised the amount paid by the tenants as rent, claiming that the prices of building materials had been inflated.
A co-tenant of the house, who pleaded anonymity for fear of being victimised by the landlady, said peace reigned in the house until the former landlord died and Alhaja Oye inherited some of the rooms in the house.
She said, “There was no problem in this house before Alhaja took over the ownership of some of the rooms in 2014. Immediately she did, we started battling with her over one problem or the other. On several occasions, she will introduce bills, which we must pay or risk being ejected from the house.
“Concerning her case with Mr. Idimeh, we are all aware that the landlady gave the man a three-month quit notice, when his current rent is not yet due. Inspite of this, the man had pleaded with her to extend the quit notice to six months, but the woman vowed that she would make their lives miserable. Later in the afternoon, when there was rain, the woman came with a carpenter to remove the apartment’s roof and left Mr. John’s belongings in the rain.”
A neighbour of the Idimehs, Mr. Emmanuel Odita, said, “The woman must be heartless, totally. We hope police would handle the case well to make her a scape goat. Despite the fact that she inherited some rooms in the house, she has made life unbearable for people living in that house. As a matter of fact, I am calling on human right activists to intervene in the matter. How can a woman do such a thing?”
Giving his own account of the incident, Odita said, “When I came back from work, my children told me that Alhaja had removed her tenants’ roofing sheets because they owed her. The following morning, I saw it and I pitied the family involved, though there was nothing I and other people could do because we are all tenants, too.
Lamenting the incident, the victim, Idimeh, said he and his family members had since been rendered homeless by the alleged lawlessness of his land lady.
“Alhaja Oye had waited until we left for work before she hired a carpenter, who broke into our apartment, and removed all the roofing sheets and ceiling boards under the heavy rainfall, which began on Friday and lasted till Sunday,” he said.
The fifty two-year-old Idimeh, who said he had been a tenant in the house since 2012, also said,” We were shocked and traumatised, when we came back at night only to discover that all our household belongings, including television, gas cooker, stove, bed, foam, clothes, shoes, decoder, sound system, foodstuffs, cooked food, generator and important documents, had been destroyed by the rain.”
Lamenting further, Idimeh said, “I and my five children are now stranded because of the wickedness of Alhaja Oye. She only inherited the apartment from the late landlord, who died in 2014.
“This is not the first time this woman has harassed me. I was arrested in December by one Inspector Balogun and one Inspector Otega in March, just because I interacted with other tenants, which the landlady detested. Honestly, since 2012, when I moved into that compound, I have not had any issue with other tenants.”
One of the sons of the victim, Johnson idimeh, alleged that he and his siblings had been rendered homeless and that they had nowhere to lay their heads since the landlady removed the roof of their apartment.
“It has been a hell for us since last week that we came back from work and met our roof open due to our land lady’s action. All our things were destroyed by rain and since then, we all sleep in the passage at night, when other tenants have gone to bed. We have nowhere to go for now because we didn’t plan for this,” he said.
Findings from some tenants of the house also revealed that Alhaja Oye recently got some of their co-tenants, including Baba Ope and Iya Jamiu, arrested by the police.
Idimeh has, however, accused some police officers from the Igando Division of complicity, aiding and abetting the landlady to harass her tenants after allegedly collecting some bribe from her and thereby denying them justice.
But the Divisional Police Officer of the division, Mr. Adedeji Adeniyi, who spoke with our correspondent on the phone, denied the allegations.
“I was not around when they reported the case. I just came back and saw the old woman behind the counter and asked them to release her because the offence is bailable. Moreover, I don’t want anyone to die in my office. But that doesn’t mean we have freed her. The case is going to court this morning. As I drop this call now, they will go and pick her while we take her to court,” Adeniyi said.
When our correspondent visited the house, the landlady, Alhaja Oye, declined to comment, saying, “I have nothing to say to anyone”.
The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Olarinde Famous-Cole, said he would find out the details of the case from the concerned divisional officer and get back to us. But he never did as at press time.
