Operatives of the Lagos Police Command have arrested a 25-year-old secondary school dropout for allegedly stealing his mother’s Toyota SUV Rav4 in Ibadan and attempting to sell it in Lagos.
The command’s spokesman, SP Benjamin Hundeyin, who confirmed the arrest on Wednesday, said that the suspect, who was the eldest of three children of the woman, was arrested on Sunday by the Ijora Badiya Police Division in Lagos when he encountered some problems with the car.
He said that the suspect, who was alleged to have stolen about N500,000 from his mother earlier to play a betting game popularly known as ‘Baba-Ijebu’ wanted to sell the car to play the same game he had never won.
According to the police public relations officer, the suspect left Ibadan early morning on Sunday with the car without the consent of his mother, stressing that while in Lagos at about 9.00 a.m., the car developed a fault and he invited a tow vehicle to tow it to somewhere within Ijora Badiya area.
“While they were going, the driver of the tow vehicle observed that the suspect’s body movement and discussion showed that the car was stolen.
“The driver of the tow vehicle alerted the police at Ijora Badiya immediately. The police came to them on the road; took the suspect and the vehicle to the station for interrogation. The suspect immediately confessed that the car belongs to his mother in Ibadan and that he brought it to Lagos to sell.
“The police called his mother and asked her the whereabouts of her son and her car. The mother said that she did not know the whereabouts of her son and her car.
The police asked her if she had directed her son to sell her car, but she said that she never gave such a directive”, Hundeyin stated in the statement.
She was, therefore, requested by the police to come to Lagos for her car.
