The Pains Of Lagos Tenants A Call For Social Justice, By VERACITY DESK

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From across different communities in Lagos, new tenants are lamenting. They are complaining of excessive payment of electricity bills as a result of bills already incurred by landlords and former tenants.

Frequent rent hikes are unsettling tenants across Nigeria, putting a lot of families in disarray.

Rising cost of living as reflected in unaffordable food prices, high energy and transportation costs, all driven by galloping inflation that peaked at 33.95 percent in 2024, has taken joy away from many households. The situation is such that many of these households can no longer afford two meals a day.

This has been made worse by rents hikes, which seem to have become a pass-time for most landlords acting through estate agents.

Experts at a real estate business forum in Lagos recently, canvassed legislation at state government levels to ensure that tenants are not further squeezed at this time of economic challenges.

Meanwhile the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and a number of court judgements have banned the imposition of landlords’ outstanding bills on new tenants. Both NERC and the courts have clarified that the outstanding electricity bills of landlords and ex-tenants are not to be enforced on new tenants.

Many of the new tenants who cannot afford the outstanding bills are complaining that they are suffering the consequences of sins they did not commit, as they are being forced to suffer power outage for non-payment of bills they did not incur.

It was further gathered that many new tenants are being asked to pay the outstanding bills of their landlords in the country, with the electricity distribution companies disconnecting customers who failed to comply.

One of the new tenants, Mrs Rukoyah Sulaiman who spoke regarding the outstanding bills she and other tenants were forced to pay, shared her pain on how they suffered blackout in the apartment she rented for four years now.

Hear her: “We’ve never had light since I moved in here in 2019. The whole four years spent here is in total darkness due to the recklessness of the former tenants who did not pay electricity bills. About N400,000 was outstanding before my husband and I moved in, hoping there would be solution as the landlord promised. After many years of patience with no solution, we complained to the landlord again and there was still no solution.”

She went further to explain how she suffered during her nine months of pregnancy considering how much she already had to handle.

“My whole nine month pregnancy journey was one of suffering with no light, heat rashes and others. I also lost things like power banks, phones and other accessories, which cannot be counted,” she narrated.

Another woman, one Mrs Lawal Kafayat explained how she suffered paying unending outstanding electricity bills. According to Mrs Kafayat, “The building wasn’t really old and it was initially, we were told to get prepaid meters due to the outstanding balance left by some of the old tenants. Each flat was asked to pay N10, 000, which we did. Afterwards, we were told to pay additional 40,000 to subscribe on the prepaid meter. After suffering a blackout for several days, we had to finally pay, as we had no choice. We later realised that just little money was being used to recharge the prepaid meter while the remaining is being used to sort the outstanding bill from previous tenants.

Mrs Onah, whose house has an outstanding of about N180,000 electricity bill explained how the tenants are still living in utter darkness without being able to use all electrical appliances she and her husband got as newlyweds with a new born baby.

Her words: “When my husband first moved in there was light in the house. After about three months, the authorities disconnected the light and our landlord gave the old tenants quit notice to evacuate the house. Then he packed the cables to the police station to make sure we pay what we don’t owe. I think they’ve been pleading and bribing the electricity authorities until the bill rose to a little below N200, 000. After the disconnection, we’ve been suffering from no light. Even my baby cries throughout the night always because of the heat.

“Sometimes I have to put on the generator overnight to be able to sleep with my baby and when I can’t afford petrol, I have no choice than pay N300 to enable me to charge my phone, power bank and rechargeable fan. It is that terrible.”

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