My experience with “prejudiced” landlord — Prof. Yemi Osinbajo

“In 1989, I was about to get married and I was searching for a good house to rent. I met my landlord who happened to be an elderly lawyer who obviously did more real estate than legal practice. He let me know that there were three categories of people he would not rent property in his care to – Igbos, Ijebus and lawyers.”

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has narrated how a “prejudiced” landlord some decades ago discriminated against him for being an “Ijebu man”, a Yoruba sub-group in South-west Nigeria.

Mr Osinbajo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, said the landlord, who he encountered in 1989, had a policy of not renting his house to “Igbos, Ijebus and lawyers”. The policy, he said, affected him as a lawyer and an Ijebu man.

The vice president narrated this story on Monday at the Maiden Edition of the Policy Making & Good Governance Lecture Series of NIPSS. The lecture was titled “Creating A Homeland for All: Nation-Building in a Diverse Democracy.”

Mr Osinbajo used the story to address the ethnic profiling that characterised the 2023 general elections, where there were reported cases of harassment and intimidation of voters based on their tribes and ethnicity.

“In 1989, I was about to get married and I was searching for a good house to rent. I met my landlord who happened to be an elderly lawyer who obviously did more real estate than legal practice.

“He let me know that there were three categories of people he would not rent property in his care to – Igbos, Ijebus and lawyers. I was disqualified on two accounts. He then said to me, pointing behind him at a few shrivelled-up books on a small bookshelf, that he had the arsenal to destroy any tenant in court if I gave him any trouble. He later, to his embarrassment, discovered that I was a Law teacher and adviser to the then Attorney General of the Federation and of course, that I am also Ijebu.

“I have shared this story to illustrate a point that I think is hugely important, which is that prejudice and bias are natural aspects of human nature,” he said.

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Mr Osinbajo, who contested the 2022 presidential primary of the APC but lost to Bola Tinubu, said high competition during elections increases the level of division in the country.

“Elections by their very nature, tend to be divisive affairs. Partisan democratic competition compels us to align ourselves with the camps that most reflect our ideals and aspirations. In a diverse society such as ours, democratic competition is intensified by the sociocultural cleavages that exist in society. This is true of any heterogeneous society or democracy.

“In an election cycle in which the major contenders come from different ethnic-regional classes or zones, there was always a sense that the competition was going to be particularly intense. But at the same time, it would not be accurate to reduce the election to an ethnic census,” he said.

Mr Osinbajo also spoke on the division along religious lines and urged all candidates to sheathe their swords.

Religion was quite clearly made an issue, and in some parts of the country, political biases are introduced even between denominations of the same religion.

In some cases, ethnic profiling took place at polling booths. A popular female food blogger and YouTuber called Sisi Yemi, a Yoruba woman, took to her verified Twitter handle to say ‘My husband and I were not allowed to vote, they said we look like Igbo people. I can’t believe this!’

“Almost without fail in every election cycle, politicians have forcefully, either overtly or covertly, sought to persuade voters that voting for their particular party or candidate is the will of God and that voting for the opposing party was a violation of that divine will. Repeatedly, we hear of prophets who support political parties one way or the other,” he said.

This is a matter of great concern because long after an election is over, and long after the leading contenders have sheathed their swords, the rhetoric, the words and the means used to compete can have adverse long-term effects on society,” he said.