Jail
A Minna Chief Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday sentenced a 32-year-old man, Tanko Mohammed, to three years’ imprisonment for parading himself as a military man and defrauding unsuspecting members of the public of N7m under the pretext of job placement in the Nigeria Army.
Mohammed was docked on four-count charge of criminal breach of trust, cheating, impersonating a public servant and criminal charms.
The Police Prosecutor, ASP Daniel Ikwoche, told the court that one Diko Barde had filed a petition against the accused person at the IGP monitoring unit, Minna office on July 9.
Ikwoched quoted Barde as alleging that in March 2017, the accused person came to him claiming to be a soldier serving with the Nigeria Army Depot, Zaria.
He said the accused told Barde that he had slots for 42 candidates to be recruited into the Nigeria Army.
The prosecutor stated that each candidate was said to have paid to the accused person between N105, 000 and, N150, 000, amounting to about N7m without offer of appointment as promised.
According to him, the accused was found in possession of rubber stamp of the Nigeria Army Depot Zaria, Army Magazine publication 2013 and some charms during investigation.
He said the offences were contrary to sections 312, 322, 132 and 217 of the Penal Code law.
When the charges were read to the accused, he pleaded guilty and begged the court for leniency.
The prosecutor thereafter prayed the court to try him summarily in line with section 157 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
In his ruling, Magistrate Nasir Muazu maintained that he would not be lenient on the accused person as he deliberately set out to inflict pains on his victims.
Muazu sentenced him to one-year imprisonment with hard labour for each of the counts of breach of trust, cheating and impersonation, to run consecutively.
On the prosecution’s application for compensation to the victims, the judge asked the complainant to make such claims by way of a civil suit.
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