A 27-year-old non-Nigerian, Justin Konnoudia, has been sentenced to six months imprisonment by a Magistrate’s Court sitting in Osogbo, capital of Osun State, for stealing a motorcycle.

Konnoudia, who worked as a bricklayer at a site in Kelebe Area of Osogbo, was found guilty of dispossessing his supervisor, identified as Ademola Adeniyi, of his Bajaj motorcycle.

When the defendant, who claimed not to be a Nigerian, was asked to take his plea for the one-count charge of theft slammed against him by the police, he pleaded not guilty.

However, after an accelerated hearing was ordered into the matter, the accused changed his plea to guilty.

Giving the facts of the matter to the court, police prosecutor, Inspector Adeoye Kayode, informed the court that Konnoudia committed the offence on June 5, 2025, at about 10:00 hours.

He said the motorcycle was valued at N780,000.

Kayode explained that Konnoudia, who was hired to offer bricklaying services at a building site at Kelebe, complained to his supervisor that he was hungry.

The supervisor, the nominant complainant, was said to have given Konnoudia some money to go and eat. The defendant begged that he should go to the canteen on his supervisor’s motorcycle. After Adeniyi permitted him, he never returned to the site.

According to the prosecutor, after Konnoudia fled with the motorcycle, he was arrested in Kwara State following the efforts of some police detectives who tracked him.

The charge read, “That you Justin Konnoudia, on the 5th day of June, 2025 at about 10:00hrs at Kelebe Area Osogbo in the Osogbo Magisterial District did steal one Bajaj motorcycle with the registration number FDY 835 QD valued the sum of Seven Hundred and Eighty Thousand Naira (N780,000:00k), only property of one Ademola Adeniyi and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 383 and punishable under Section 390 (9) of the Criminal Code Cap 34 Vol.II Laws of Osun State of Nigeria 2002.

The presiding Magistrate, M. A. Olatunji, stated that the prosecution had convinced the court beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the offence. She, therefore, convicted him.

Meanwhile, the convict pleaded with the court for leniency, explaining that hunger drove him to commit the offence.

In her judgment, Olatunji sentenced Konnoudia to six calendar months’ imprisonment with an option of a N50,000 fine. (The Guardian)

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