Court cases are a waste of time

I am not a person that goes around looking for trouble but if there's one thing I have learned in this life, it's that troubles and problems will always come your way regardless of if you're a trouble lover or not. In Nigeria, many people actually try as much as possible to stay away from courts because of how long it takes and sometimes the judgement might not even be in your case after the whole thing. I once read of a case where some siblings were fighting for the properties of their late father in court and the whole thing took 11 years!

Let's not even ignore the fact that pursuing court cases can be expensive and also stressful, which is why it's the last thing that comes to my mind whenever I have an issue with someone but sometimes, it does come to my mind on some very rare occasions. One such occasion happened back in 2022 when I was still at the university. I rented a self-contained apartment in one of the off-campus communities and I have been staying there since my first year. But in 2021, the landlady suddenly died and we the tenants of the house didn't know our fate.

Later on, we heard that the landlady's son had taken over the hostel and one day, the family of the landlady came around to introduce themselves and reminded us about paying our rent when it expired because they had their mother's records. It was fine by me and in January of 2022, I paid my rent. One month later, ASUU went on strike and most students went home to their parents but some of my neighbors stayed behind. It was during this ASUU strike that a neighbour sent a message to the WhatsApp group that the landlady's son said everyone has till month's end to move out of the hostel.

I thought it was a joke until I called someone else who confirmed it. Apparently, the son wanted to sell the hostel, and so he said everyone should move out. "So he didn't know he would sell it before he asked us to renew our rents?" That was what I asked my friend. It was barely up to 4 months since I renewed my rent and now he is saying we should all move out of the house, and what made it worse was that he said he isn't refunding anybody. A few weeks later, the ASUU strike was called off and everyone went back to the university.

I got to the hostel and realized that some people had already moved out, especially those whose rent had expired or were about to. I was seriously pained at that point and helpless, but then I remembered that there are laws about these things and that you can't just evict a tenant whose rent has expired. Even though the tenant is owing rent, you still have to give them 3 months' quit notice before you can evict them. But in this case, there was no quit notice, just word of mouth, so I suggested to my friend that we just sue them

He immediately laughed when I mentioned suing them and he asked if I was serious. Then he reminded me that the people I wanted to sue were rich and powerful, their mother (the landlady) was even a barrister before she died. He also mentioned that it would be expensive for me to hire a good lawyer and pay the necessary legal fees, "isn't it better to just use all that money to go rent somewhere better?" That last question he asked was what did it for me, I gave up after that. I realized that my friend was right, it just wasn't worth it.

A few days later, the family lawyer came around and threatened to come with the police on Monday (he came on a weekend) if we didn't move out before then. At that point, it was just about 5 of us left in the hostel and one person moved out later in the evening. I decided to pair with my friend and looked for another apartment to rent. We already had one when the lawyer came that Saturday and we planned on moving out the next day (Sunday). When we finally moved out, it was remaining just 2 people in the hostel, and they were in the same situation as me; their rent hadn't expired, still had a few months left.

I later heard from them that the lawyer didn't return on Monday as he said, and they called the landlady's son to plead with him to give them more time, and he did (an extra month). I didn't care anymore at that point and I was just happy to put all that problem behind me. I used almost all the money I saved up during those months of the ASUU strike to rent a new place and it was truly a painful experience but I didn't have a better choice. The only thing that came to mind was suing the family but even I know that it's a fruitless endeavour, especially in a country like Nigeria.

Thanks for reading

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