The House My Father Built by Adewale Maja-Pearce; Kachifo Limited (Farafina Kamsi), Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria; 2014; 175pp
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
The essayist and critic, Adewale Maja-Pearce, writes in the recently released reprint of his 2014 book, The House My Father Built: “I hadn’t expected anything from my father’s will and was surprised when I discovered that he had left my siblings and me a block of four flats in a decent area of Lagos. Each of us was allotted one flat in the block ”
He had to wait for 10 years for the terms of the inheritance to be sorted out. He was the son of a Nigerian doctor’s father and a British mother. Once ironed out, he flew in from London where he was living to begin the battle to take hold of the price property in Surulere, Lagos.
“ The tenants stilled occupied two of the flats. They also lived in the annex at the back. They had refused my earlier offer of a year rent-free to help them move. So, I put a friend in one to keep an eye on things during my prolonged absences. I settled into the other as I prepared to do battle. I had no idea at the time how fierce and long-drawn-out it would be. How rancorous and tiring, how absurd and humiliating.” According to Adewale.
Adewale had to do battle with tenants who were ill-assorted. “The Yoruba Alhaji in the front flat downstairs was the most combative – outwardly at least. He was a squat thick-set man in his early fifties with red lips, bandy legs, and a white skull cap. He thought me amusing when I politely knocked on his door and told him that he had to go in a year’s time. it wasn’t personal, though. In the event, it took me six years to be rid of him…”
Another tenant, “Ngozi, a light-skinned Igbo woman in her mid-30s, lived with her two brothers. One of whom later turned out to be her son. The other was a scam artist who spent most of his time at one of the many cyber cafes springing up all over the city.”
In Adewale’s words: “Where the Alhaji was mischievous, she was haughty.” Her eviction is the stuff of Nollywood as narrated in The House My Father Built. The third tenant: “Pepsi was not only a poor man but also an ineffectual one, by no means the same thing.” Pepsi died a year after his eviction, killed by a runaway bus at Ojuelegba.
The real McCoy of the book and house was the unemployed potbellied fellow called Prince. Prince helped Adewale to facilitate all the evictions while living rent-free. He could handle any duty perfectly except help himself. He could not pay his rent and plotted to indict Adewale by inviting the police, only to paradoxically get himself incarcerated in Ikoyi Prison.
Incidentally, Prince had earlier told Adewale that any tenant who sends the police after the owner of the house “is capable of killing you”. Prince not only called the police on the landlord but capped it all up by hiring assassins to kill him. He even tried to deploy juju to finish off the landlord. However, he confesses much later that the landlord survived his diabolical attack because: “You walk with God.” Prince was fond of saying: “Move by faith and not by sight.” Prince eventually had to leave the house – and then died.
This book by Adewale Maja-Pearce throbs with corrupt policemen, crooked lawyers, and compromised judges in a decadent Lagos society where anything goes. This book is a creative non-fiction classic as enthralling as V.S. Naipaul’s novel A House for Mr. Biswas.
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu is a renowned poet, journalist, and author.
Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.
