Why the Regulation Was Developed to Favour Tenants at the Price of Their Landlords

Once upon a time, ahead of the arrival of modern day legislation regulating Landlord and Tenant relations, Tenants were at the mercy of their Landlords who wielded and exercised extreme powers over them. Then, the Landlord experienced the electrical power to unilaterally improve hire and the Tenant was not in a placement to concern the increment nevertheless arbitrary, unconscionable and unjustified the increment was. The Landlord also had the electrical power to evict the tenant with no advancing any purpose for carrying out so. He was underneath no obligation to give to the Tenant notice of his intention to terminate the tenancy or of his intention to evict him. If the Landlord needed to evict a Tenant from his home, he was entitled to use drive or to resort to self-assist to do so. Without a doubt, the energy of the Landlord in those times more than the Tenant knew no bounds.

And so it was that the Tenant stood weak, powerless and vulnerable in the encounter of the huge powers of his Landlord. Landlords westerham His capability to deal effectively with his Landlord was eclipsed and indeed extinguished by the extreme, arbitrary and autocratic powers of the Landlord more than him.

This condition of affairs gave rise to the imbalance and inequality that have arrive to characterize the connection between Landlord and Tenant right now. At that time, the romantic relationship of Landlord and Tenant was a contractual one involving two unequal get-togethers, with the Landlord as the effective social gathering and the Tenant, the weaker get together. The phrases and situations of a tenancy or lease settlement have been presented to the Tenant on a get-it-or-go away-it foundation. The Tenant experienced no say as to his rights, interests, obligations and obligations under the settlement. It was as a result the need to correct the injustices, abuse, oppression and exploitation that Tenants suffered at the arms of their landlords that necessitated the intervention of authorities rules in contracts involving landlords and their tenants. These laws just take the kind of legislative enactments commonly referred to as Tenancy Regulations, Landlord and Tenant Regulations or Rent Manage and Restoration of Premises Laws. In Nigeria, many regulations have been enacted to shield tenants from the excesses of Landlords.

The Federal Federal government of Nigeria as nicely as the various states has produced many legal guidelines on the subject matter. Legislation on Landlord and Tenant relations currently in Nigeria consist of:

one. The Recovery of Premises Act, 1990 which is the regulation regulating Landlord and Tenant relations in Abuja

2. The Lease Handle and Recovery of Premises laws of numerous states in Nigeria.

3. The Tenancy Regulation of Lagos Condition, 2011.

Note that these regulations are equivalent in provision and impact, with only minimal variances. The targets of these laws are twofold:

(1) To afford tenants the greatest attainable protection from exploitation and oppression by landlords by avoiding arbitrary increment of hire and the illegal eviction of tenants.

(2) To stability, unify and harmonize the interests and legal rights of the landlord with these of the tenant and therefore avert inequitable and unfair bargains in which one particular celebration gains at the cost of the other party.

Regrettably nevertheless, these rules have failed to result or obtain the significantly required stability and fairness in the legal rights, pursuits and obligations of Landlords and Tenants. Relatively than correcting or curing the inequity, imbalance and inequality in the stability of bargaining powers and positions of the Landlord viz-a-viz the tenant, what these regulations have reached is a in close proximity to complete reversal of the balance of bargaining energy in favour of the Tenant. These laws have turned the bargaining table against the Landlord and tilted the harmony of bargaining power in favour of the Tenant.

Opposite to common view that the tenant is the weaker get together in Landlord-Tenant connection, the Landlord who was previously the more powerful and dominating celebration in the Landlord-Tenant partnership is now the weak get together. This is because the regulation has empowered the Tenant to bargain properly and at times ruthlessly, at the price of his landlord. Certainly, the regulation has striped the landlord of his energy to cut price effectively with the tenant. The wish of the legislature to pay for Tenants security from the excesses of Landlords is accountable for this sorry point out of affairs. The determination of the legislature to secure and promise the tenure of tenants by imposing limitations on the electrical power of the Landlord to recuperate possession of his premises from Tenants is at the root of the Landlord's existing woes and misfortune.

This is why it is usually mentioned that it is less complicated for a camel to go via the eye of a needle than for it is for a Landlord in Nigeria to recuperate possession of his premises from his tenant. The trouble seasoned by landlords in recovering possession from tenants is as a end result of statutory protections entrenched in Nigerian law by which tenants are sought to be guarded by guaranteeing and securing their tenure. To safe and ensure a Tenants' tenure and to stop illegal or forceful evictions, Nigerian regulation gives that where a landlord wants to repossess his premises from a tenant, he should utilize to court for an buy to get better possession, unless of course the tenant voluntarily relinquishes possession of the premises. As we shall quickly see, by depriving the landlord of his electrical power to repossess his premises and investing very same in the courts, the tenant is thus promoted and elevated to a place the place he stands in excess of and earlier mentioned his landlord. Aside from the rule necessitating landlords to sue in courtroom to recuperate possession of their premises, there are many other impediments imposed by law on the right of a landlord to recover possession of his premises. The cumbersome and time wasting prerequisite of serving the tenant notices of landlord's termination of the tenancy on a specified day as properly as of landlord's intention to use to court to get well possession is chief among this kind of impediments.

Even a lot more offensive and destructive of the proper of the landlord to repossession of his premises in Nigeria is the idea of statutory tenancy. What this principle means is that a tenant whose term has expired (and who should to have moved out of the premises) enjoys the total safety and backing of the law to continue to be on the premises and cannot be ejected from the premises unless of course a court docket orders him to vacate the premises. This sort of a defaulting tenant is entitled to support of statutory notices like any other kind of tenant. The Supreme Court in the case of African Petroleum Ltd. V. Owodunni went as far as holding that a statutory tenant(i.e. is 1 whose expression has expired but who has refused to move out) can sue the landlord for trespass to land. In accordance to the Apex courtroom, these kinds of a tenant stands in the identical situation as a tenant whose tenancy even now subsists. One particular miracles if the law encourages tenants to be poor tenants who violate or dishonour their covenants with landlords.

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