In Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, ETF 3 is one of the largest halls where the students read, play, do tutorials, sleep, steal, chop Morocco, and crack a joke.
This hall is also the noisiest and busiest hall at night which make UDUS students name it ‘General Market’.
Even though it is being called the general market, I find it so interesting and lovable to be reading in the hall.
Don’t let me distract your attention from the main story you want to hear in this piece which is how an unknown thief stole Jambito’s phone in my presence in ETF3 and went scot-free.
The incident occurred on the 1st of January, 2022, around 1:00 AM. The power supplier interrupted the light and the hall went very dark to the extent that one cannot recognize the face of someone reading or sleeping beside him.
Some students were reading, while some were sleeping as it was already late at night. All of a sudden, I saw a black guy, his appearance looked suspicious and he looked like a crook. He was with a brown bag and he was looking at every seat to discover who had slept off so that he could commit his atrocity.
When I sighted the guy, I started suspecting that the guy had an evil plan to execute in the hall, but the darkness in the hall hindered me from seeing his face.
He stood at the back and used his small phone to call one person. He told that person that he is already in the ETF3. I was stylishly looking at him to know the plan he wanted to execute.
Shortly, he started going through the second row from the right side in ETF3 like a person who is leaving the hall. He stopped at a spot and he sat in front of one student who put his head on the table. The guy had slept and he used Ankara cloth to cover his head to protect himself from mosquitoes bites.
Since I have started suspecting the guy, I flashed my phone light in the guy’s direction twice. However, what I noticed a light blinking beside the Jambito that was sleeping. So, I turned off my light. Some minutes later, the guy stood up and started going.
I was sitting at the back when the incident happened, but when I discovered the suspicious guy had stood up, I quickly ran to that guy to wake him to inquire whether he had lost anything or not, but he replied that he was not searching for anything.
Funnily enough, when I woke him up to ask him this question, that thief was still inside the ETF3 and since he said he didn’t lose anything, I went back to my seat immediately.
Before I sat down, I saw the guy searching everywhere, looking like a person who had lost something. I quickly asked him what he was searching for, but he didn’t reply to me, instead of replying to me, he kept checking his bag. I moved closer to him and that was when he came to his senses and discovered his Infinix Hot 8 and his power bank had been stolen by a thief.
I quickly narrated what happened to him and we ran after the thief immediately. When we were searching for him, we saw one guy with the same brown bag I saw at the back of the miscreant that stole that Jambito phone.
The guy disguised like a female urinating while standing. I flashed my phone light to discover whether she is actually a female and even if she is a female, how will she be urinating while standing.
Some seconds after, the person looked back and we discovered he is a male and not a female. He removed the veil that made us think she was a female and we challenged him that we are searching for one thief who stole the phone in ETF3.
We asked him to hand over his brown bag to us for searching, and he confidently gave us the bag. After thorough searching, we found nothing in the bag.
I called the phone’s number, it rang and when I called the number a second time, my phone switched off immediately. I said we should search the guy’s socks but he refused, noting that he only allowed us to search his bag because we said Salama to him. He added that he is coming from Engineering class and he decided to urinate at that angle.
We believed him and we entered the ETF3 together with that guy. When we entered, I called the number again and the phone rang. When I discovered this, I insisted that the guy’s socks should be checked thoroughly.
When he heard of this, he stood up and started hurling abusive words to me in Hausa, shouting, and screaming in the hall. He quickly took off his shirt and was about to take off his trousers. I still suspected that the phone was inside his socks. He started speaking Hausa to some people and that is why he was allowed to continue watching his movie since I don’t know what they were discussing.
Jambito who is a 100-Level student of Pharmacy and at the same time the owner of the stolen phone begged me to go around the classes if we can see him. When we checked out of the ETF2 and we didn’t see anyone, we decided to go back, but before we returned to ETF3, the guy I suspected had left.
This incident actually pained me because if the owner of the phone didn’t sleep with his mind and his senses, we would have caught the thief and he would have recovered his phone and his power bank immediately from that unknown thief. It really pained me as if it was my phone that was stolen. He put that 100-Level student in sorrow in the early morning of January 1st, 2022. I decided to pack my books and return to the hostel because I could not assimilate anything again.
That was how the thief went scot-free without being apprehended. The lesson in this story is that you should not sleep with your mind and senses in the class. This is because if the guy had answered me in affirmative when I inquired whether he had lost something or not, we would have caught the thief.
In your opinion, do you think the guy we suspected was the one that stole the phone?
Have you experienced any incidents related to this? If yes, kindly share it in the comment section.
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Abdulrasheed Hammad is a 400-Level student of Law and the Editor-in-Chief of the best press outfit on UDUS campus, PEN PRESS UDUS.
He can be reached through this mail: abdulrasheedhammad@gmail.com or 08083638703.