I was initiated into robbery in a mosque - Boy

A 14-year-old boy, Ajayi, arrested for allegedly breaking into a shop at Jakande Estate, Ejigbo, Lagos, where he stole a laptop, has said that hunger forced him into crime after he was introduced into a robbery in a mosque where he was sleeping.

Ajayi, who was arrested along with another 13-year-old boy, Balogun, after they sold the laptop for N2,000 said he was taking to the mosque by his father after his step-mother drove him out of the house.

He said: “I don’t even know my biological mother. My father has refused to tell me who my mother is. I don’t know if she is dead or alive.

I was staying with my father and my step-mother until two years ago when she told my father to look for someone for me to stay with. That fateful day I stole N200 from my step-mother to buy food because I was hungry.

She drove me out of the house when she got to know of it.” Ajayi said it was in the mosque that he was introduced into the robbery by older people he met there.

According to him, while in the mosque, he had no option than to steal to survive because he didn’t want to die of hunger. On why he was arrested, he said he had entered a shop where he stole a laptop.

“I showed it to a friend of mine who followed me to where I sold it. The uncle who bought it gave me N2,000 with the promise that he was going to give me another N1,000.”