I remember when the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), sealed up my friend's house because the fraudulent activities of one of his tenants were tracked to the house.
It wasn't a funny episode, as the said tenant, who was already preinformed of the arrest, went into hiding. Even his wife was nowhere to be found, and out of desperation my friend's wife took the EFCC officials to the school attended by both her son and the tenant's son. She and the officials hoped that during closing hours, the tenant's wife would come for school run, which would eventually lead to her apprehension.
Unfortunately, the woman beat them to their plan, as before their arrival, she already picked up the son in the early hours of the morning on account of an emergency. In hopes that they could apprehend the tenant's wife through the school, as it was exam period, the EFCC officials, using their authority, mounted a hidden surveillance within the school premises.
An action that angered the management of the school, which led to the expulsion of my friend's son on the count that his wife's action destabilized the school's operation.
When my friend was informed of all that was going on, he contacted a lawyer who filed a lawsuit against the EFCC for sealing his house and then his son's school for expelling his son in such a manner.
While my friend spent a lot of money on court cases during that period, he did emerge victorious, as the court ordered for his house to not be confiscated and his son's school begged for an out-of-court settlement.
I have seen a lot of ugly incidence play out with neighbors and tenants alike, and my friend's story is one of many. Personally, I have had my fair share of conflict with my neighbors.
In my compound, I started off with my neighbours as one who minds her business. I try to not get involved in any compound planning or activities, but then I saw that they were not capable of handling certain issues bordering on utility maintenance.
For a long time, I had to live under the discomfort of neighbors' disagreements and indecisiveness on a utility maintenance structure. Then one day, I said enough is enough and took over the utility management.
Everything was going well, and it seemed for the first time we were actually cooperating as neighbors, but then one tried to play a fast one by getting his own utility line, and it backfired. This made him angry at everyone in the compound, which destabilized the peaceful coexistence we had going on.
Before the whole incidence, my daughter usually frequents this particular neighbor's house to play with his daughters. But after the incident, he restricted his daughters from their friendship with my daughter and I did the same.
In all honesty, the current condition that I'm living with my next door neighbor gives me concern as it's no way to live. Our neighbors by default are our immediate family, one that we run to and expect to be there for us in our time of need.
Quite sad that I really do not have the best neighbours as there was a time my mom was ill and my sister ran to our neighbor who owns a car to help take my mom to the hospital. But given that he was running late for work, he told my sister my mom's health is of no concern to him as all thay matters at the moment was getting to work.
This was the same neighbor that when his house caught fire, it was my siblings and I together with our mom that assisted his wife in restricting and quenching the fire while he was away leaving his nursing wife and infant son.
I was quite upset hearing his actions towards my mom and sister and as much as I wanted to go on a persona vendatta, I had a rethink because to what end?
