The police have arrested the landlord of a building on 41 Church Street, off
Olamummy Street, Aboru, Lagos State, Mr. Akinrinade Adebayo, over the death of
his tenant.
The 65-year-old tenant, Uche
Samuel, died after he was beaten by some thugs allegedly hired by the landlord
to
evict him from the property.
evict him from the property.
Adebayo was said to have used the
thugs because of Samuel’s failure to move out of his house.
Samuel, a father of seven and
native of Ohaji-Egbema in Imo State, was an employee of Mandilas Nigeria
Limited before his death.
When Punch
Metro visited the house on Tuesday, Samuel’s corpse was
still lying on the ground, while many people there discussed the unfortunate
incident.
Our correspondent was told that
Samuel was attacked by the thugs led by the landlord’s child, Tope and two of
their neighbours’ children around 8pm on Monday.
Samuel died at the Lagos
University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba around 12.30am on Tuesday.
It was learnt that the tenant and
the landlord fell apart some months ago when he (landlord) gave Samuel notice
to quit his house.
Samuel was said to have protested
the notice since his rent still remained six months to expire.
Wife of the deceased, Ngozi, 57,
told Punch Metro that her husband was murdered in their bedroom in the presence
of their first child.
Ngozi said two days before her
husband was killed, the wife of their landlord warned her that “they would soon
see since they refused to move out.”
She said on the day of the
incident, thugs numbering 15 strangled her husband.
Ngozi said, “My son, who is
suffering from stroke told me that when they came, they asked, ‘Where is that
stubborn man and his stubborn son (Solomon)? We will teach you a lesson today.
They pounced on him and beat him mercilessly.
“Someone ran to my shop to tell
me that my husband had fainted. I rushed to the house and when I got there, I
shouted for help and people came. We rushed him to a nearby hospital but he was
rejected.
“Some people went to report to
the police to enable us to get permit to take him to LUTH. When we got to LUTH,
he was certified dead.”
She said the hoodlums, apart from
killing her husband, destroyed their properties and stole the money he had
brought from the bank to enable them to rent another apartment.
A relation of the deceased, Mr.
Austin Odunze, said when Sunday told him about the quit notice, he asked him to
go to his lawyer.
“His (Sunday’s) lawyer wrote to
the landlord’s lawyer about the quit notice. When the landlord received the
lawyer’s letter, he went and brought a letter from Lagos State Mediation
Centre, Akowonjo branch.
“When the man refused to go to
the mediation centre, the landlord engaged him in a a physical combat in
December 2012. After that, Samuel reported the matter to a nearby police
station. At the station, Samuel was not pleased with the way the matter was
being handled and he requested that it should be transferred to Area M.
“At Area M, the matter was
settled and the landlord was told to give him six months to enable him to
leave. The landlord agreed. But because of their desperation, they were not
happy with Area M’s decision. Since then, they started threatening him.”
He appealed to the relevant
authorities to handle the matter with every sense of justice to avoid
inter-tribal conflict in the area.
A brother of the deceased, Mr.
Angus Uwenwa, said one of the perpetrators regretted that Samuel died.
Uwenwa said the man had told him
that they only went to teach the family a little lesson and that they did not
expect he (Samuel) would die.
Punch Metro learnt that apart from the
landlord, the police had arrested about eight others in connection with the
killing.
However, Tope, was said to have
fled when policemen went to the apartment.
Our correspondent was, however,
not able to speak with any policeman at Ile Epo Police Division, where the
suspects were being held.
The state police command’s
spokesperson, Ngozi Braide, said she had not been fully briefed on the
incident.
Punch Nigeria
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