UTME candidates’ phones purportedly stolen; man arrested

A 23-year-old man named Quadri Qudus has been detained by the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps on suspicion of stealing 21 mobile phones from UTME candidates in Ilorin, Kwara State, in July of this year.
On July 5, 2022, Qudus is said to have taken the applicants’ phones while they were taking the test at a computer-based test center in Ilorin.
Since candidates were not permitted to bring their phones into the testing facility, he is reported to have pretended to be a face mask vendor and collected the phones from them.
However, the culprit had vanished with the phones before the candidates could finish their exam papers.
Qudus and two other suspects were paraded at the state command headquarters of the corps, and the command’s spokesperson, Olasunkanmi Ayeni, claimed that the suspect was apprehended by NSCDC agents in Ilorin one month after allegedly committing the crime.
Ayeni claimed that on July 5, 2022, Qudus took 21 phones from UTME aspirants in Ilorin.
He stated: “Qudus pretended to be selling face masks at a UTME examination centre and the candidates out of trust put the phones in his custody and he ran away with their phones. He was eventually caught by our men in Ilorin.”
Qudus said that the phones were stolen from him and that he hurried away to avoid the owners’ wrath when he spoke with journalists.
He spoke, “The phones were stolen from where I kept them. I ran away out of fear of what would happen to me. I ran for my dear life before the owners came out of the examination centre because they could beat and lynch me if they heard that their phones were stolen.”

GOGAN Media