One week ago, Iya Ibeji, Motunrayo Adebare Adewale-Shomope, nudged me about a post I had promised to make in 2021.
On 18 March 2021, I had made the following comment underneath her post:
“Unfortunately, ise ile nba won d’ode.
Your write-up just brought a very horrible experience I had with an elderly man and his family in London. The experience stopped me from ever engaging in letting out a property. I will rather buy land, hold on to it, and sell when it has appreciated than buy and build/buy a property for letting. I will write about it sometime.”
𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐲 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞.
In 2005, I wanted to extend my home in London. The 3-bedroom house had just a toilet combined with a bathroom. If anyone is using it, just pray you do not start having stomach upset.
Getting a permit to extend the home to include an extra room, and in particular an alternative toilet, was no trouble. I was a senior manager in the same local government, with responsibilities spanning housing, urban regeneration, planning permits, etc. I knew the requirements and quality compliance that must be adhered to.
However, on second thought, I felt that the $25K expense to extend a home built in the 1950s was not a good value for money, when I could use that as a deposit for a new, much bigger and energy-efficient house. As such, I bought a new place instead of carrying out an extension.
Once we moved to the new home in 2006, we decided to let the previous residence. The agent said he had found a prospective tenant who turned out to be an elderly Nigerian couple.
The first premonition of trouble I had in my spirit was that this couple, as soon as they were told I own the house, asked if I was a Christian and began to push their CAC membership in my face whilst begging me to let the house to them.
The second premonition of trouble, which I did not pay attention to, was that my first child was just a few weeks old when we moved out of the property. He was with me the day I went to meet this couple at the letting agent’s office. The moment my son saw this couple, he began to cry nonstop until I took him completely out of that environment.
Initially, I refused to let the property to the couple until my wife went spiritual by saying that, being Christians, and these Christian couple begging us, we need to avoid offending God by causing offence to men.
They said two heads are better than one, and with a three-year-old marriage in which two have become one and decisions should be jointly made, I allowed myself to be persuaded by my wife and I let the property to this couple.
The first month’s rental payment was the only easy rent we got from the couple who turned out to be ungodly human beings masquerading as Christians.
For over one year that they lived in the property, we were owed many months’ rent while the wife would be using taxis for even local shopping.
When we gave them a termination notice, they refused to leave the property. I had to go through the entire legal process to evict them from my property. They left the house the night before bailiffs were going to forcefully eject them, leaving significant damage to the house.
I can talk for hours about the horrible experience we had with this couple. It was that bad that, being the only income earner, having to pay two mortgages with no rental income to defray one, there were days my wife and I had to fast whilst barely affording the milk for our child.
Ever since, pushing your religion in my face became an early warning signal whenever I am having a potential business discussion with anyone. I switch off immediately, and getting me to turn on the enthusiasm for that venture will become a difficult chore.
- B.
It is ironic that the little profit I made after the sale of the property, was used to buy a plot of land from a senior official of the Lagos State Ministry of Lands. However, about five weeks ago, we discovered a shady transaction that changed his name on the allocated land to someone else’s.
As of today, the chap, who is now “a Pastor”, has refused to take my call or respond to my messages, which indicates he might have knowledge of what has happened. He probably has forgotten that I have a fat file of documents relating to that land, and that when I decide to make ‘remote trouble’, everyone involved will vomit whatever they ate and did not eat.
For now, I have asked my friends who introduced him to me to go and talk to him before I show him a sample of the ‘shaking’ I can do to him.
He will then realise that he is not anointed and will be touched in ways he never imagined.
*Dr ‘Kunle Ojeleye is an author and a scholar.