IMPORTANT NOTICE

Though it was agonizing to see the result of crime he had committed; all the tenants in the house still felt it was better late than never. The landlord should die in jail.

What more, at least, we can now live and sleep in peace with our two eyes closed. Chief Egunjobi owns the highest number of houses in Fadayori Street. There are rumours that he has a total of twelve houses on the street, but I can authoritatively say he has seven. Three of the seven buildings are storey buildings, while the other four are bungalows. Although it is difficult to say that Chief Egunjobi is the richest landlord on the street, but if the most troublesome landlord was to be chosen among the over five hundred landlords in the area through a ballot by local residents, he would effortlessly emerge the winner of the contest. It wouldn't even be a keen contest.

In character and mannerism, there is no landlord like Chief Egunjobi on Fadayori Street. Living in any of his houses was like staying in Sodom and Gomorrah. Apart from physical assaults tenants suffer in his hands, Chief Egunjobi is renowned for his use of charms and other fetish powers to intimidate tenants into submission. Funny enough, his physical appearance is a perfect reflection of his character. He had lost one of his eye balls and limps with his left leg. Chief Egunjobi is less than five feet tall and has a bald head. There are a lot stories about how he made his money. One of such stories has it that his lost eye ball is not unconnected with money ritual.

Infact, there is a more frightening story of how Chief Egunjobi made his money. Stories have it that some twenty years ago; he had mysteriously lost his entire family in a ghastly motor accident. His three children and wife were returning to Lagos from Ibadan. They had gone to attend the wedding ceremony of a relative.  

Before Berger Bus Stop, a petroleum tanker ran into their vehicle. It was only the driver that survived the accident. Everyone who had thought that it was one event that would see Chief Egunjobi calm down on his brutish tendencies, were surprised to see what happened afterwards. The Chief insisted that his late wife and children must all be given a mass burial. They must all be interred in the same grave. There was a little protest from his family members and that of his wife. For fear of being spiritually attacked, they all later withdrew to their shells. There were other stories that the wife's younger sister who was the most antagonistic of the decision lost her first son in the process.

The death was linked to Chief Egunjobi who had threatened to deal with her. As if to bear out the rumours being peddled about; six months after the death of his wife and children, Chief Egunjobi acquired six plots of land in different parts of Fadayori Street. In another one year, he had built six different houses. He remained unmarried for another three years. Five years after the death of his first wife and children he got a new wife. The same year, the new wife gave birth to a baby boy. The baby was named Oluwatobi. This was the same period that I packed into one of his bungalow buildings. Incidentally, Chief Egunjobi resides in the same house.

Because of the living proximity between us, it was now easier for me to know so much about him. Despite staying in a three bedroom apartment, he does not sleep in any of the three bedrooms. He sleeps in the living room. He also does not use his personal bathroom and toilet; instead he makes use of the common toilet and bathroom in the house. It is also a standing rule in the house that no tenant must return to home after 9pm as the house's security door would have been locked and to be re-opened by 6am in the morning. Chief Egunjobi personally supervised the daily opening and closing of the door. Within this period, tenants were to remain indoors and should not have any reason to step out of their apartments into the house's common areas.  With so much ease, Chief Egunjobi's rules were adhered to by the tenants. Because of the fear of what might befall us, none of the tenants ever attempted to break the landlord's rules. Stories of his past and present fetish behaviours were enough to scare anybody into obedience. Mr. Seun one of the oldest tenants in the house once told me a story of how a female tenant lost her pregnancy after she flouted the landlord's 'dusk to dawn' sit in your apartment orders.  The seven months old pregnant tenant according to Mr. Seun had forgotten to keep her 'potty' in the room. By midnight, she was pressed and she decided to step out of her room to use the building's common toilet. She unfortunately ran into the landlord performing some rituals within the house. She did not recover from the shock and before dawn, she had a miscarriage. She was later taken away by her relatives.

There was also the story of a tenant that mysteriously ran mad after he was said to have mistakenly stepped on a strange object within the house. Accusing fingers were pointed at the landlord. However, despite the character of the landlord, tenants in the house could not just muscle the courage to leave. It was as if we were bound by a kind of spell. To many of us, living in Chief Egunjobi's house was the almost the only reasonable option.   My fiancée had even threatened to stop coming to visit me if I did not leave the house but I cannot just explain why I cannot leave. Something just keeps tying me down in the house. However, after seventeen years of what I like to call 'living in bondage', God has finally set us free. Chief Egunjobi is now in trouble.  Oluwatobi the landlord's only son was now eighteen years old. He had grown to become very strong in the Christian faith and rebellious to his father's way of life. He was the youth leader in the church. Although Oluwatobi's behaviour was unacceptable to the landlord, he was still the only thing that made the landlord happy since he had no other child anywhere. I was very close to Oluwatobi. He was always around me for assistance in his academic works. We attended the same church. His activities in church always mystified a lot of people who knew his background. Oluwatobi was a clear affirmation of the adage that says “it is from the black pot that the white 'pap' is made”. Eventually Oluwatobi turned out to be our source of 'freedom'.

It was a Saturday morning. I was busy listening to one of my favourite talk shows on radio. There was a knock at my door and when I ushered in the person at the door I was not surprised to see that it was Oluwatobi. It was mostly on weekends that I always had the time to help him out with his studies. However, this time there was more to his visit. He told me he wanted to share a top secret with me. “What secret” I asked almost immediately as if I had known that it was an issue that also affected me. “My father is a murderer”, Oluwatobi said looking calm and reassuring. I prayed that there was nobody lurking around. “What did you just say Tobi?” I asked as if the one young man standing sitting beside me had just expressed himself in a strange language. “I mean it, my father is a murderer and I have my proof”, he repeated with extreme confidence. Oluwatobi told me he was prepared to expose his father. He explained to me that Chief Egunjobi kept a secret shrine in the house.  

One of his bedrooms was the shrine. Oluwatobi told me that his father never opens the room and that the key to the room was kept jealously by his father. He said he had received several revelations about this mysterious room from his prayers. “Yesterday, my father had left home very early. After my morning devotion, the Holy Spirit had revealed the location of the key to the room to me. It was the precise place. Amazingly the key was kept where everyone could see it. It was right before my very eyes. Honestly, the eyes sees what the mind chooses to see”, Oluwatobi continued his story. He said after he opened the room, what he saw almost made him 'pass-out'. In the room were coffins of different sizes, wrapped with red cloths. The coffins had decomposing corpses in them. There was a big book on a table. The book had the names of different people with some dates in front of them. In the list was the name of Chief Egunjobi's first wife and children and the date in which they all died. There was another list of names.

It was the names of Chief Egunjobi's future 'ritual preys'. “Is my name in the list?” I asked Oluwatobi with so much fear and concern. He was a bit reluctant. He eventually told me that I was number three on the list. My mouth immediately went dry. Oluwatobi told me he was on his way to the police station and that he had only come to seek my advice before proceeding. I told him it was the best thing to do. What infact could I have said? My name was number three on the list. The police men arrived later in the day.

Chief Egunjobi has since been arrested and is standing trial for murder.