Four men – Glad Ilevbaoje, Godspower Agbedia, Ndifreke Joseph, and Taiwo Salami – have been arraigned at the Tinubu Magistrate Court, Lagos for allegedly stealing cartons of beer and damaging the beer parlour.
Court and police documents showed that the four were arrested after Abigel Augustine, the owner of the bar, lodged a complaint at the Ajah police station, Lagos.
Augustine accused Ilevbaoje, Agbedia, and Salami of the crime, leaving out Joseph. The accused said, however, that it was a trick to give Joseph a soft landing.
Trial would resume on June 26 when Augustine is expected to be cross examined by defence lawyer, Emeka Opara.
She had earlier alleged that on November 14, 2014 the three men destroyed her five-year-old shop which she inherited from her mother. But she was faulted on the grounds that the shop sits on somebody else’s property.
In Augustine’ evidence on June 3, the prosecutor, Sergeant A. Koti, asked her: “You said your shop was destroyed. What did they destroy and what did they steal?”
Opara objected to that line of questioning, arguing that the witness gave evidence of things destroyed and not stolen. But he was overruled by Magistrate S.K. Matepo.
Augustine then alleged that cartons of beer worth an estimated N166,000 were stolen.
Ilevbaoje, the caretaker of the premises where the shop is located, had earlier alleged that it was Augustine who contracted Joseph, a carpenter, to pull down her plank structure beer parlour which she intended to replace with a container cabin.
Ilevbaoje said he called the landlord, John Odiase, on the telephone who hurriedly came over and stopped Joseph from proceeding with the work.
Odiase asked Agbedia to build a shop on the same spot to prevent further encroachment on his property.
Ilevbaoje said he was shocked when his wife later called him from Ajah police station that she was being detained and would only be released when he presented himself.
