On the night of Thursday February 23, 2023, FIJ’s website was silenced by cloud service providers DigitalOcean.

As it would later be discovered, this was due to a FALSE copyright infringement claim by people working for Olawale Ayilara of Landwey, a real estate investment company.

Ayilara got a certain Luis Felipe Colina, all the way from Venezuala, to claim that a story first publishhed by FIJ on April 2, 2022, had previously appeared in his newsletter. DigitalOcean then pulled FIJ’s website down, thinking we had indeed copied the content from Colina’s newsletter.

In defiance of the attack on press freedom by Landwey and DigitalOcean, FIJ hereby reproduces the said piece.

A Nigerian entrepreneur resident in the United Arab Emirates has accused Landwey, a real estate company, of refusing to hand over his property to him, despite paying them in full.

The entrepreneur, who asked not to be named, told FIJ that he first deposited N5 million for a terrace in June 2020. He stated that he paid another N37 million three weeks after the first payment. Landwey then assured him that his house would be ready in November 2020.

He said Landwey, owned by Olawale Ayilara, later told him they would give him another house on a different estate in Ogombo, Lagos, as they had sold the one that caught his fancy. The entrepreneur said he agreed with the firm, but this was how his ordeal started.

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“In November 2020, they told me to be patient as they had not completed the house. Landwey asked me to wait for three full months. By this time, I had already left Dubai for Nigeria. Being patient, I waited for another three months, but they did not give me my house,” he told FIJ.

“In the first half of 2021, I called them several times to find out why they were yet to hand me the keys to the house, but they kept telling me to be patient. In the second half of the year, they stopped taking my calls. I do not know why.”

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He said he made part payment for a plot of land with the company, but on asking for a refund, they said they would give him only 30 percent of what he paid.

“It has been almost two years now, and they are yet to give me my house. I paid in full, yet I don’t know what is going on,” he said.

On Friday, FIJ made several calls to the number displayed by Landwey in the ‘Contact us’ section of its website, but it failed to connect. At press time, the company had also not responded to a text message and an email sent to them.