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ABSTRACT
The use of self-help and forceful eviction have been used over the years as a tool by landlords or their agents in evicting tenants who refuses to deliver up possession of their premises. These methods includes forceful eviction by thugs, use of Military and police personnel’s in quitting a tenant and many other means. Although there are legal and institutional framework in Nigeria that regulates the landlord and tenancy relationship, many landlords are not even aware of such laws and those who are conversant with the laws feels that they only exists in the books and are thus not enforceable. This work examines in details the procedures for evicting a tenant under the enabling laws in Nigeria as well as the various judicial pronouncements on the issue. The research adopts the doctrinal research methodology. The doctrinal research methodology is chosen above the other methods because it annexes and put together all the work that have been done on the topic and related issues by various legal writers over the years on the topic so that a holistic understanding of the use of self-help in the recovery of tenancy law in Nigeria, can be gotten. From the various Landlord and tenancy laws examined and the pronouncements of Courts over the years on the issues of self-help, the research reveals that the Nigerian law frowns at a landlord who refuses to follow the issues responsible for the use of self-help to include delay in the dispensation of justice, adherence to technicalities and the uncooperative attitude of the Courts in the award of legal fees to Landlords in legal proceedings for recovery of premises. It therefore recommends that there should be amendments to the various recovery of premises laws of most States of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to provide for more stringent punishment for landlords who resort to self-help, that there should be quick dispensation of justice in the Nigerian Court, that there should be need to create awareness to the general public on the existence of the recovery of premises Laws by the various States of the Federation and that the Court should endeavor to do Justice instead of adherence to technicalities amongst others. The research concludes that self-help should be discouraged since it can expose the landlord to payment of damages or even imprisonment.
