A Kumasi court has handed a 27-year-old Nigerian mechanic an eight-year prison term after he admitted to snatching nearly half a million Ghana cedis from a driver who had just left a bank.
Kennedy Uduoka Onuebu appeared before the Asokwa Circuit Court 1, where presiding judge Fred Obikyere imposed concurrent sentences across four charges: five years each for conspiracy and unlawful damage to property, and eight years each for conspiracy to steal and stealing. With sentences running concurrently, Onuebu will serve a maximum of eight years.
Prosecutors told the court that on 5 March, Onuebu and a second Nigerian national, Micheal Chinedu, trailed a driver identified as George Forkuo after he withdrew GH₵479,500 from a bank in Kumasi. At approximately 2:20 pm, along Asokwa New Road, Onuebu, riding pillion on a motorbike, smashed the window of Forkuo’s vehicle with a metal object while the driver had stopped to buy fuel, and made away with the cash.
The pair attempted to flee, but Forkuo confronted them and caused both men to fall from the motorbike. Chinedu escaped in the chaos, but bystanders held Onuebu at the scene with the money, and he was subsequently handed over to police. He admitted the offences in his caution statement, the prosecution said.
Chinedu remains at large. The court directed that efforts to arrest him be intensified, with proceedings against him remaining ongoing.
