A Chief Magistrates’ Court sitting in Gwagwalada, Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, has sentenced a 25-year-old student, Akeem Yakubu, to forty-eight hours community service over theft.
The convict, it was gathered, would cut grass in the Gwagwalada Divisional Police station in Abuja for two days for stealing two cell phones worth N8,700.
Yakubu, who pleaded guilty after being charged with theft by the police told the court that he sold the phones for N5,000 and used the money he realised to buy clothes.
In his ruling on Tuesday, the Chief Magistrate, Aliyu Shafa, ordered that the convict should report to the Gwagwalada Divisional Police station by 10 a.m. and close at 2 p.m each day.
Shafa, who warned the convict to desist from committing crimes and to be of good behaviour, also ordered him to return to his parents in Okene, Kogi State.
Earlier, the Prosecution Counsel, Abudullahi Tanko, told the court that the complainants, Suleiman Ahmadu and Tijani Adamu of Angwan Fulani, Kuje Road, Gwagwalada, reported the matter at Gwagwalada police station on Sept. 17.
Tanko said that Yakubu stole the phones of the complainants while they were charging it and that the offence contravened the provisions of Section 287 of the Penal Code.
However, the Defence Counsel, Yusuf Jibril, prayed for the court for leniency, adding that such grace would propel him into changing his ways and be of good behaviour.
“If he is sentenced to a prison term, he will mostly likely come out hardened and pose threat to society. He is a very young man at the peak of his formation age, I urge the court to assume a human and parental face, and to temper justice with mercy,” he said.
