Labourer bags 6 months imprisonment for stealing electric wires

A Life Camp Magistrates’ Court  in Abuja on Thursday, sentenced a 23-year-old man, Gentle Moses, to a term of six months in the correctional centre for stealing electric wires.

The court convicted and sentenced Moses, after he pleaded guilty to a three-count charge of stealing preferred against him by the police.

Magistrate Hauwa Aboki sentenced the convict based on his plea and the evidence presented by the prosecution.

Aboki, however, gave the convict an option of N500,000 fine in lieu of the term in the correctional centre.

Earlier, the Prosecutor, Mr Babatunde Bankole, holding the brief of Mrs Charity Nwachukwu, had told the court that the convict committed the offence on June 27.

Bankole said that the complainant, Mr Bello Abu, who resides at Kinshasa Street, Zone 6, Wuse, Abuja, had reported the matter at the Galadima Police Station.

According to the prosecutor, the convict was employed as a labourer to work at the complainant’s site located at Justice Estate Karasana, Abuja.

He said that at 11:30 p.m. on the said date, the convict trespassed into the building and removed the already fixed electric wires valued at N4 million.

Bankole said that while the convict was in the act, security men in the said estate caught him and took him to the Galadima police station.

He said that during investigation by the police , the convict confessed to have been going to the building, damaging and stealing cable wires to sell.

It was also discovered that he had sold some of the electric wires to one Abdullahi, now at large, for the sum of N53,000.

The offences, Bankole said, contravened the provisions of Sections 348, 346 and 288 of the Penal Code.