30th November, 2010
For failure to pay two years’ rents and refusal to pack out, a tenant in Calabar woke up on Monday night to find thousands of millipedes on the veranda and parlour of his two-room apartment.
Mr. Joe Bassey, who resides at 100, IBB Way, Calabar, has been engaged in a running battle with his landlady, Mrs. Ufonkwe, following his inability to pay his rent for the past two years amounting to N80,000.
The caretaker, Mr. Ukofia, said he has been visiting the man virtually every day to demand for the rent but “each time I come here, he is either hiding somewhere or the wife would be intimidating and harassing me by asking if they were the only debtors on earth, as if that was the way to pay one’s rent,†Ukofia told P. M. NEWS.
Joe Basey, the tenant, has since fled the house along with his wife and son in the night, leaving behind a heap of millipedes at his post with another heap in his apartment.
A co-tenant, who does not want her name in print, said the man was always bragging that the landlady could not send him out of the house until he was ready to move out.
“He was always bragging, telling anyone who cared to listen that he is from Akwa Ibom State and that the woman cannot do him anything. Now, he has run away, why did he not wait? Maybe the next time, it would be angel of death that would visit him†she said.
Calabar is noted for having such obnoxious and weired practices.Three years ago, a vulture dressed in overall jacket was sent with a letter by a man to his friend, following his refusal to pay a debt.
The police were not invited, only a crowd gathered to watch the millipede spectacle.
—Emma Una/ Calabar
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