From Rose Ejembi, Makurdi      

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at barely 16 years old, Terhide had graduated from stealing his parents’ money to robbing people at gunpoint, before nemesis caught up with him recently.
A Senior Secondary School 1 student of Kosaki College, Gboko-Yandev, Terhide is currently cooling his heels in police custody in Makurdi, Benue State. He was arrested while attempting to rob a young lady at gunpoint, with a locally made pistol at the Gyado village of Makurdi, after he made efforts to escape from the failed robbery. Asked how he got the pistol, the teenager said he had gone to defecate in the bush in his village in Anyiin, Logo Local Governmet, when he sighted the weapon in an abandoned Fulani hut.
Logo has for over two years been severally attacked by Fulani herdsmen, with the most recent attack on three communities claiming many lives.
“I went to (defecate) in the bush one day. As I stooped to defecate, I saw the pistol inside an abandoned Fulani settlement. I picked it up, hid it in my room and went back to school without my parents suspecting anything,” he said.
On his return after two months in school, Terhide said every night while everyone was asleep, he would bring the pistol out from where he hid it in his room and examine it before hiding it back. This practice continued for a while until he decided to trade it and in no time, he soon made up his mind to take it to Makurdi, allegedly to sell it.
Still without his parents knowing anything about the gun in his possession, Terhide, who had told his parents he was going to visit his elder brother in Makurdi, with the pistol in his bag, travelled all the way from Anyiin to Makurdi.
He said: “I arrived Makurdi in the afternoon. At about 6pm that same day, I picked the pistol and kept it in my pocket with a plan to sell it to any prospective buyer. And while I was waiting, a lady passed by and immediately I saw her phone, I craved desperately for it and I walked up to her, showed her my pistol thinking she would just drop the phone and run away.
“I was wrong. As soon as I showed her the pistol, she raised an alarm, which started attracting people to us. I initially started walking away but when some boys who had gathered asked me to stop, I made to run away but they caught me and on searching me, they found the pistol and gave me the beating of my life.”
The suspect, who is lucky to be alive after the incident, said he had planned to sell the weapon for N15,000 before the bubble burst. He recalled that he started stealing from his parents as a young boy without his parents suspecting anything: “When I was in primary school, my mother, a businesswoman, would usually give me N20 to buy snacks in school. But any day she didn’t give me that money I would steal money from her purse for the same purpose. I was doing the same thing to my father, a wood breaker, and I was surprised that none of them suspected.”
Although, Terhide claimed that he stopped stealing when he got into secondary school and was in the boarding house, he confessed that he was a very stubborn boy.
Unfortunately, after his arrest, his father was also arrested and detained at the state police headquarters for some days before he was later granted bail, while Terhide has remained in detention, waiting to be taken to court.
In tears, Terhide who spoke with Daily Sun at the State Criminal Investigations Department, begged his parents, especially his father, to forgive him and take him back as his son: “I don’t think they will have sympathy on me but only the Almighty God can make them have sympathy on me. If I am able to come out of this, I will see it as another chance to live a better life. I will never go back to my old criminal ways.”
The schoolboy presently full of regrets also advised young people of his age to shun bad habits and bad company and heed their parents’ advice.
Benue State Police Public Relations Officer, Moses Yamu, said the young boy was caught while trying to rob a lady at gunpoint, adding that he would be taken to court when investigation was complete.