N5.5m transferred to artisan’s bank account lands him in police trouble

An aluminium fabricator named Edadu Collins is
currently in police trouble after N800,000 was
wrongly transferred to his bank account and he
went ahead and withdrew the money.

Collins, is facing a two-count charge of stealing
preferred against him by the police.
A police prosecutor, Corporal Chinedu Njoku,
however disagreed yesterday with the police
report that the alleged amount Collins stole was
N800,000 from Ecobank, insisting that the
amount involved was N5.5 million, after proper
investigation was carried out.

The defendant, who pleaded not guilty said he
knew nothing about the bank issue.
Vanguard reports that Corporal Njoku told the
court that the defendant committed the alleged
offences between January to March 2011 and is
punishable under Sections 409 and 285 of the
Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2011.

He told the court that N800,000 was transferred
to a wrong account, which happened to be the
defendant’s and he did not deem it necessary to
report to the bank, rather he went ahead and
withdrew the money. He further told the court that
the actual amount was N5.5 million, when it was
investigated.

The defendant told the court that his account had
been giving him problem and that he had to stop
using it. According to Collins,
“I tried to renew the account, but it proved
abortive. I thought it was the network but
after a long while, the bank could not
solve the problem and I had to abandon
the account. “The bank attendant told me
to pay some money into the account so
that it can be rectified. The attendant later
asked me to wait.”

The defendant further told the court that he asked
the attendant several times to know what was
happening,
“I was just told to calm down. By 7p.m.,
some men came and asked me to follow
them. I asked where we were going, but
none responded. I realised later that we
were at the police station and there, they
started asking me for the money.”

Collins told the policemen that he had not been
using the account for a long time, but they got
evidence that he withdrew from his account.
Magistrate O. Olagbende granted him N100,000
bail with two sureties in like sum.