Landlady, tenant at war · Man resists quit notice, claiming court’s order · Landlady confiscates his property on court’s order

By SUNDAY ANI (nichsunny@yahoo.com)

Until November 8, 2013, 38-year-old Ezeobi Okeke lived happily as a tenant with his family at Close 39, House 2, Satellite town, Lagos.  A native of Osumenyi in Nnewi Local Government Area of Anambra State, Ezeobi, who is a freight forwarder, now squats with friends after he was thrown out of his apartment by his landlady. He informed our reporter that his landlady broke into his apartment in his absence, packed his property into a waiting truck and zoomed off to an open field in Festac town where she dumped them. But, before the ejection, he alleged that his landlady had visited the apartment on November 5 and changed all the padlocks, while he was away. The woman, according to him, said she had orders from the court to eject him. She was also said to have broken into his apartment in the presence of people who claimed to be court sheriffs.

Ezeobi, who claimed to have occupied the two-bedroom bungalow since 2003 as a tenant said what led to his predicament started in 2011, when he wanted to renew his rent and his landlady suddenly refused to collect it from him. He alleged that his efforts to know where he went wrong proved abortive as his landlady sued him to court. But, after the legal tussle that followed, the court, according to him, ruled that he should pay his landlady the arrears and continue occupying the apartment as a tenant.

With the court judgment in favour of Ezeobi, he thought the storm was over, but he was wrong. Her landlady only waited for the most auspicious time to strike. And that opportunity came on November 8, 2013, two years after the court judgement. Ezeobi was taken unawares, as he claimed to have travelled to the east with his family when the woman struck.

Now, the young man is crying blue murder, calling on the human rights community as well as the federal government of Nigeria and all well meaning Nigerians to rescue him from the fangs of the woman who allegedly defied court orders to eject him in his absence and confiscate his entire property.

MURDERED BY VIGILANTE BOYS · Sad end of a young man killed by his kinsmen

By SUNDAY ANI (NICHSUNNY@YAHOO.COM)

The family of Sylvanus Agbo from Umunkaka Amukwa Ihe in Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State is currently grieving over the gruesome murder of their 29-year-old son, Ndubuisi. Mr Agbo, who is hypertensive, regretted that his son’s brutal murder had aggravated his poor health condition, even as he pointedly accused the village vigilance group of complicity in the crime.

Events that led to Ndubuisi’s gruesome murder on September 18, 2013, according to his father, started on September 1, around 8pm along Orba Road, a stone’s throw from their compound. The young man was said have run into the vigilante boys on his way home after he closed for the day’s business at his Ikpa market. He was said to have stopped over at a near-by beer palour to drink a bottle of beer after which he continued his homeward journey on his motorcycle. He was stopped by three members of a vigilance group and promptly arrested for moving at late hour. The bar owner where Ndubuisi branched on his way, according to the distraught father, had gone to confront members of the vigilance group and reminded them that it was still past 8pm and that other people were still moving around. It was gathered that they told him that Ndubuisi was their brother and that he should leave them as they knew how best to handle the matter.

When the bar owner left, Daily Sun gathered, the vigilante boys started beating Ndubuisi, who in order to save his life, escaped. Unfortunately, he ran into the house of one man simply identified as Chikwado, who rather than gave him cover, gave him away.

Odd self employment: The gains, the pains

By SUNDAY ANI (nichsunny@yahoo.com)

Before the present unacceptable level of unemployment in Nigeria, people engaged in self employment; not necessarily because they could not find paid employment but just because many of them wanted to be masters unto themselves. Even then, when we talk about self employment, what readily comes to mind are the artisans – the auto mechanics, vulcanizers, painters, hairdressers, barbers, shoemakers, drivers, tailors, traders and carpenters among others.

But today, survival instincts and existential imperatives have thrown up another group of self employed individuals, who have invaded the employment market like plague. They take up the most difficult, mean and dishonourable jobs, as it were, to make ends meet. They are masters of their own just like the artisans but the society looks down on them. They are seen to be at the lowest rung of employment ladder because they toil every day, under the sun and in the rain. They neither enjoy the comfort of air-conditioner nor that of fan. They earn their living by sweating profusely before they can make a penny.

They include cart pushers, scavengers at refuse dumpsites, iron mongers, barrow pushers, carriers and house-to-house launderers among others.

When Sunday Sun prodded into the closets of these classes of self employed Nigerians, it was discovered that contrary to what people think about their jobs, they earn more money than most people in paid employment. They are seen everywhere – residential areas, along the roads, motor garages and market places among other areas.

A visit to major markets like Ojo Alaba International Market in Ojo Local Government Area and Mile 12 Market in Ikosi-Isheri Local Council Development Authority, both in Lagos State revealed that cart pushing as a form of self employment is very lucrative and seems to dominate others. Cart pushing is divided into many parts; there are those who collect refuse from different households and dispose them off at the refuse dumpsites, there are those who convey goods from one point to the other, there are those who fetch water and sell to small scale caterers and various small unit households among others.

Edo under kidnappers’ siege ...But Oshiomhole says, we’ll combat menace

By SUNDAY ANI

Like a wild harmattan fire, what started as the abduction of foreign oil workers in the Niger Delta region, by militants to drive home their agitation against environmental pollution and degradation resulting from oil exploration activities, has today become a big monster that is ravaging every section of Nigeria.

What started as a tool of agitation in the hands of the militant youths in the Niger Delta has    become a lucrative business venture for the teeming unemployed graduates in Nigeria. In the beginning, the target was mainly foreigners, especially Europeans and Asians. But today, the focus has shifted to Nigerians who are considered to be rich or those have any kind of affiliation with the wealthy or the government. From east to west; north to south, the story is the same. It has assumed a frightening dimension that nobody is safe. Their victims cut across all ages, ranging from children of even less than one year, to people as old as 90 years and above. It has no sex barrier.

Recently, Edo State, South-South Nigeria, seems to have become a safe haven for the people in this illicit business. The state has been in the news for quite some time now over the ugly development. The roughnecks seem to have congregated in the ancient empire and its environs where they unleash mayhem on the inhabitants as well as visitors and passersby.

Nigerians were taken aback when on Friday, August 23, human rights activist and lawyer, Chief Mike Ozehome (SAN), was abducted by kidnappers.

But just as jubilation was on air over the release of Chief Ozekhome after about two weeks in the gulag, Nigerians were again jolted by the abduction of an Edo monarch, the Iyase of Udo in Ovia Southwest Local Government of Edo State, HRH Patrick Igbinidu. The kidnap of the traditional ruler on the same day that Chief Ozekhome was released, has confirmed the fears in some quarters that Edo State has become a safe haven for kidnappers.

UNEMPLOYMENT Hard times, hard choices; Things graduates do to survive

By SUNDAY ANI (nichsunny@yahoo.com)

If the recent assertion by the Statistician-General, National Bureau of Statistics, Abuja, Dr Yemi Kale is anything to go by, then unemployment rate in Nigeria still stands at 23.9 percent; a figure he considers low when compared to other African countries like South Africa where the figure is well above 40 percent. Dr Kale had said in May that the federal government was creating jobs but admitted that the number of graduates being churned out every year from various institutions of higher learning was growing at a faster rate than employment generation.

The reality however, is that hundreds of thousands of Nigerian graduates don’t have jobs to do. From north to south; east to west, the story is the same. Many of these unemployed graduates have masters’ degree, which most of them acquired walking a tight rope with the belief that once they have their second degrees, they would have brighter chances of getting good jobs. But, that never happened; instead it became their greatest undoing as most employers of labour shun them because they have no cognate experience and they would demand higher salaries.

For an average unemployed Nigerian graduate, the society has relapsed into Hobbesian state, where life has become nasty, poor and brutish, with the fittest surviving. To ensure that life goes on, many of them have committed class suicide and taken up jobs considered way below their qualifications. They do all kinds of jobs to make ends meet.

HARVEST OF DEATHS · Two years after man died following cassava meal, his three children suffer same fate

By SUNDAY ANI (NICHSUNNY@YAHOO.COM)

For two years, the Ezeugwu family of Amokwu-Enu Obukpa in Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State has been harvesting deaths. In 2011, the head of the family, My Lawrence Ezeugwu, a senior driver with the University of Nigeria Nsukka, died after eating a cassava meal suspected to be poisoned. Three months later, his son, Chinedu, was assassinated.

In July this year, three of his children also died after eating a cassava meal and one of his wives, was suspected to be responsible for the deaths. On July 30, 2013, the woman was accused of killing three of her step-children through food poisoning. The traditional investigation method adopted by the community had implicated her as the brain behind the deaths. She protested against the outcome of the investigation, insisting she was innocent. However, nobody gave her a chance. She could have lost her life in the process, as the youth of the community demanded for her head.

The embattled woman escaped unhurt physically, but psychologically, she had been bruised. She was allegedly banished alongside her three children from her husband’s village.

The story of how three children of the same mother died after eating a cassava meal at Amokwe-Enu Obukpa in Nsukka Local government Area of Enugu State struck the University Town like an earthquake. The three children, Ikenna, Chinecherem and Nnenna Ezeugwu were said to have developed some stomach problems after eating cassava meal in July, and eventually died.

Their mother, Mrs Anthonia Ezeugwu was said to have travelled to Onitsha, Anambra State, where she had gone to look after one of her daughters who was newly delivered of a baby. She was reported to have said that her children were certainly poisoned because she took a portion of the same cassava flour to her daughter’s house in Onitsha and they had eaten it and nobody had any problem. She also said she had eaten from the same cassava flour with her children before she left for her daughter’s house in Onitsha.

Enugu community battles native doctor over land · They are jealous of my fortunes, popularity – Native doctor

By SUNDAY ANI (NICHSUNNY@YAHOO.COM)

Abbi Community in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State was turned into a mini-war theatre when on November 15; the people of Nrobo, a neighbouring community invaded a housing estate belonging to a native doctor, Emmanuel Udoji. Dr Udoji, who said he is a native of Abbi acquired a massive parcel of land which extended into Nrobo community, where several units of housing are being constructed. According to the native doctor, he had embarked on the construction of a police post having obtained permission to do that following incessant robbery attacks on his clients along the road leading to the community from Baracks junction in Nsukka to Nimbo in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area. A police post and a cell had already been built with quarters for some of the police officers who would be posted to the community. He said he had also applied and obtained permission to establish a neighbourhood watch in the community. He had also erected structures to accommodate members of the neighbourhood watch to be formed in the community. But, the bubble burst and hell was let loose when on November 15, the scheduled date for commissioning of the projects, the youth of Nrobo community came out en masse to resist any attempt to commission the structures, a situation which eventually degenerated to the burning and pulling down of some of the structures. The angry youth eventually chased everybody away from the event centre including Dr Udoji, who ran into hiding. The police team from Nsukka Area Command which was alleged to have gone to witness the commissioning of the police post, cell and quarters, also disappeared when the angry youth surged with different lethal weapons.