Site engineer arrested for paying self salary arrears

Cyriacus Izuekwe

Barely one week after a female accountant was arrested for paying herself salary arrears and retirement benefit owed her by her employer, a civil engineer has also been arrested for doing the same thing in Lagos State, western Nigeria.

The police at Shasha division arrested Engineer Adewunmi Adeniyi and charged him before Magistrates’ court, Ejigbo for paying himself salary arrears owed him by his employer.

The 32-year-old Adeniyi was employed as a site engineer by a company known as JEDALAG Nigeria Limited located at 22, Vamako Plaza in Akowonjo area of Lagos.

P.M.NEWS gathered that after Adeniyi was employed as a staff, the management started owing him arrears of salary for months. This amounted to over N500,000, despite the fact that the company was making huge sums of money through contracts.

The management was regularly paying the casual workers but ignored the regular members of staff.

According to Adeniyi, he decided to pay himself part of the money they owed him and resigned because he had no future if he continued to work there.

He said out of the N6m the management entrusted him to pay workers at the site, he deducted N311,000 as part of his N500,000 salary arrears and paid the rest to the workers at the site.

When he decided to quit the job, he presented a statement of payments and his name among those he paid.

The management became angry and asked him to refund the money and he refused and asked them to deduct it from his arrears of salary they were owing him and give him his balance.

The management went to the police and reported that Adeniyi criminally diverted the money entrusted to him.

He was arrested and taken to the station at Shasha division.

Adeniyi told the police that he was not a criminal and informed them that the management gave him about N6m to pay workers which he did and also paid himself because they were owing him too.

The police charged him to court with criminal diversion under the Criminal Code.
He pleaded not guilty.

The presiding Magistrate, Mrs J. O. E. Adeyemi granted Adeniyi bail in the sum of N100,000 with two sureties in like sum.

He was remanded in prison custody in Kirikiri pending when he will perfect his bail.

The matter was adjourned till 24 September, 2015.

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4 Comments

engr. Joshua Enumah says:

September 2, 2015 at 7:17 am

This is injustice of the highest order. They claim to be learned and they are not bcos they cannot solve primary school arithmetic. Both the presiding magistrate, police and the management of that coy should be jailed. Our leaders go free with billions of dollars and u don’t remind them. Is it an innocent person u exercise your power. That engineer should be paid damages for unlawful arrest, detention and defamation of character. That is my submission

Kamoru says:

September 1, 2015 at 4:10 pm

This is sheer wickedness on the part of the management of the company and the Judge. Where CACOL? They should come out and save this poor man from grave injustice of humanity. Where are our philanthropists and millionaires of the past 17 years? You need to save this boy and give him a job quickly.

Sunny Omoragbon says:

September 1, 2015 at 12:09 pm

@Temi Amusan, I completely agree with you. The coy and its directors should have been charged to court for refusing to pay the man after he worked for them. This is lopsided justice as far as I am concerned. The police as usual, were apparently shoddy, after collecting (I hope not) brown envelopes. The Magistrate should also have granted the man unconditional bail considering the circumstances of the case. The Magistrate exhibited a poor exercise of his discretionary power.