Abuja- A Grade 1 Area Court, Karmo, Abuja, on Wednesday sentenced a 22-year-old Abdullahi Yahaya to two months’ imprisonment for stealing a tricycle, popularly called ‘keke’.
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The judge, Alhaji, Abubakar Sadiq, however, gave Yahaya, a tricycle rider, an option of N20,000 fine and warned him to desist from committing crimes.
This would serve as a deterrent to other would-be offenders, Sadiq said.
Yahaya had prayed the court to temper justice with mercy on him saying that he had tried all positive means to buy his own `keke’.
He, said that his inability to achieve it him to steal someone else’s own.
Yahaya also pleaded for forgiveness as he told the court that his friends misled him into committing the act.
The prosecutor, Zannah Dalhatu, had told the court that one `keke’ rider, Laminu Yakubu, of 69 Road, Gwarimpa, Abuja, had reported at the Gwarimpa Police Station on Aug. 25 that his tricycle was stolen.
Yakubu said the convict had hired his tricycle from Galadimawa to 3rd Avenue in Gwarimpa.
“On getting to where he was to disembark, the convict poured some liquid substance into the eyes of the rider which rendered him temporarily blind.
“Two of the convict’s friends now at large then joined the convict to beat the rider, snatched his tricycle valued at N900,000 from him and rode it to an unknown destination,’’ he said.
Dalhatu said that on Aug. 29, the convict was found using the tricycle for commercial transportation.
The prosecutor also said that the convict confessed to have committed the crime.
He said the offence was punishable under Section 287 of the Penal Code.