Court orders Nwobodo to vacate Abuja rented home

A Federal Capital Territory High Court in Abuja has ordered a former governor of Anambra State, Jim Nwobodo, to vacate his rented home in Maitama, Abuja, over his failure to pay his due rent of about N11m arrears.

Justice S. B Belgore ordered Nwobodo to relinquish the property located at 24 Ona Crescent, Plot 768 Cadastral Zone A5, Maitama Abuja, to the owner, Adin-Miles International Limited.

The property is said to be a six bedroom mansion with one bedroom guest chalet and two rooms boys quarters.

The court ordered Nwobodo to pay the N11m arrears due from June 1, 2009 till May 31, 2011 when the suit was instituted and other sums of money covering the period before the judgment was delivered.

The court had delivered the judgment on March 3, 2015, but a copy of it was only sighted by our correspondent on Wednesday.

The suit was said to have been instituted after many failed attempts to get Nwobodo to pay the accumulated rent.

The landlord had then asked a lawyer, Mr Obinna Ajoku, to institute the suit, after futile efforts by the landlord.

In the court’s judgment, the judge granted all the reliefs sought by the plaintiff, including an order that Mwobodo “should deliver vacant possession” of the property to the plaintiff.

The court also ordered that he should pay the sum of N11m as rent arrears and that he should pay “mense profi at the rate of four hundred and fifty eight thousand, three hundred and thirty-three Naira only per month from June 1, 2011 until judgment was delivered”.

The court also ordered him to renovate the premises or pay N3m to the plaintiff for the same purpose.

“I have no hesitation therefore in granting all the reliefs of the plaintiff/defendant and dismissing the counter-claim of the defendant,” the judge had held.

The plaintiff was said to have sometime in 2008 bought the property from one Alhaji Al-Mustapha Abubakar who had earlier leased the property to Nwobodo.

Nwobodo had stated in his counter-claim that while the property was offered for sale, he expressed intention to purchase it but that he could not make any payment because the plaintiff induced his landlord to sell the property to it.

Punchng