21st May, 2022
By Paul Iyoghojie
A driver with GMT Haulage and Distribution Limited in Lagos State, Yusuf Hassan, 37, has been sentenced to two years and half years imprisonment by a Tinubu Magistrate’s Court, for stealing his employer’s Dano Cow milk and Herbicide goods valued at N30,000,000.
The convict, who resides in Apapa, Lagos, from Nasarawa State was jailed by Magistrate T.O. Babalola after he suddenly changed his not guilty plea and pleaded guilty to the two-count charge of conspiracy and stealing preferred against him by the Police at the Force Criminal Investigation Department, FCID, Alagbon Close, Lagos and the facts of the matter presented before the Court by the Police Counsel, Adoga Amedu during the trial spanning about a year.
Amedu had told the Court in the charge marked L/08/2021 that the journey to jail started for the convict in June 2020 when the complainant entrusted Dano Cow milk and Herbicide goods valued at N30m in his care as a Haulage driver to deliver to a customer, but that instead the convict diverted the goods and sold it and claimed that armed robbers robbed him of the goods.
Amedu said that the convict initially pleaded not guilty to the charges when he was arraigned in 2021 but that surprisingly, he pleaded guilty in May 2022 during the trial spanning about a year and confessed in the open Court that he stole the goods.
He said the offences, the convict committed were punishable under sessions 411 and 287(7) of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State, 2015.
Magistrate, Babalola sentenced the convict to six months imprisonment for conspiracy on count one and two years for stealing on count two without an option of a fine.