A Dei-Dei Grade 1 Area Court, Abuja, has sentenced a 30-year-old labourer Monday Ishaya to nine months imprisonment for stealing an iron panel worth N288,000.

Mr Ishaya of Dawaki Abuja was sentenced on Monday on a count charge of theft.

Judge Sulyman Ola passed the sentence after Mr Ishaya pleaded guilty to the charge and begged the court for leniency.

The judge, however, gave Ishaya an option of N30,000 fine.

Mr Ola ordered the convict to pay N288,000  as compensation to the complainant and also warned him to be of good behaviour.

Prosecutor Chinedu Ogada told the court earlier that the convict committed the offence on August 14.

Mr Ogada said that the complainant, Jamie Harbert Gudu, reported the matter at Dawaki Police Station on August 15.

He told the court that the convict criminally went into the complainant’s uncompleted building without his consent and stole the iron panel worth N288,000 and escaped.

The prosecutor said that he was trailed, caught and handed over to the police for proper investigation.

Mr Ogada said that during police investigation, the convict made a confessional statement but, however, said that efforts to recover the iron panel proved abortive.

He said the offence contravened Section 287 of the Penal Code. 

(NAN)