Francis Awoyera, the Abuja landlord who issued an unlawful seven-day quit notice to Adeyemi Bankole, his tenant, has threatened to harm him if he does not ensure that FIJ pulls down its story.
Bankole first reached out to FIJ on Saturday that his estate police called to summon him for a “discussion” regarding a petition that they received.
The discussion was to be held on Tuesday at the police station in Global Estate in the Lokogoma area of Abuja, the same estate the house Bankole rented from Awoyera is located.
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On Tuesday, Bankole contacted FIJ that he had been arrested. “They said they’re transferring to me Cybercrime Unit. They claimed I cyberbullied the man (Awoyera),” he added.
FIJ tried contacting Bankole afterwards, but there was no response.
A few hours later, Bankole messaged FIJ again that he had been released.
At the station, the policemen told Bankole to take down the FIJ’s report.
“They want me to pull down the publication and in return, he’ll give me the three months quit notice and also refund my money,” Bankole told FIJ.
“I was asked to write that and sign it. They want me to pull it down between now and 27th of this month.
“He said his friends are calling him and he’ll be suing me for defamation and get me arrested… that he wouldn’t want me to go through all that stress but I must take down the post.
“I was scared they were gonna transfer me because they promised to, initially.”
While Bankole was at the police station, Awoyera was not present physically. He called to tell Bankole to take down the report before he could increase the seven-day quit notice to three months.
In a voice recording of the call that FIJ obtained, Awoyera also threatened to harm Bankole if he did not take down FIJ’s report.
“I have the resources to fight you, and I will break your back,” Awoyera threatened on the call.
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On Friday, FIJ reported that Bankole rented an apartment from Awoyera in November 2023. One month later, Bankole noticed that he had to offset a huge debt on his electricity bill.
When he relayed this to Awoyera, the landlord said that the previous tenant had committed electricity theft and that that was the reason for the accumulated debt on the meter. He promised to track down the previous tenant but he failed to do this for a whole year.
After offsetting a huge part of the debt for a whole year and was about to renew his house rent for another year, Bankole paid N750,000 from his N1 million rent until Awoyera returned to find a solution to the electricity meter issue.
On his return, rather than find a solution, Awoyera handed all the tenants a three-month quit notice and promised to refund their rent, but to Bankole, he gave seven days to evacuate the house and vowed to deduct N7,000 for each extra day Bankole stayed. This, FIJ found to contravene the Recovery Premises Act 1945 that governs tenancy matters in the Federal Capital Territory.
When Bankole was arrested by the Global Estate police on Tuesday, FIJ called Josephine Adeh, the FCT Police PRO, but the prompt on her line repeated showed “line busy”. This remained the case when FIJ called again on Wednesday.
FIJ called Muyiwa Adejobi, the Force PRO, on Tuesday, but he could not respond at press time. “I’m in a conference, I can’t attend to you now,” Adejobi said.
The post Abuja Landlord Francis Awoyera Threatens to Break Tenant’s Back Because of FIJ’s Story appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.