'Thief' exhausted as residents whipped him, gave him food and drinks before supervising him to clean choked gutters (photos)

Some residents of Nigeria’s Enugu state reportedly made a suspected thief desilt their dirty and choked gutters, instead of handing him over to the police for prosecution and probably imprisonment.

According to Facebook user, Richard Blackstone who posted a photo of the incident on social media, the resident assaulted the suspect in moderation, gave him food and soft drinks including a bag of sachet water.

They then handed him a shovel and supervised him to decongest the gutter, rendering him completely exhausted.

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Captioning the photo, Richard Blackstone wrote: “This muscled guy was caught stealing in enugu , He was whipped small. Afterwards, we bought food for him, gave him two bottles of fanta drinks to quench his thirst and supplied him with one bag of sachet water. He was then given a shovel to desilt the big gutter leading to my poultry farm road in enugu, What a beautiful thing. He doesn’t need to go to jail. I think this is better than killing them or jail, let’s use them to keep our country clean.”

Inasmuch as assaulting the suspect amounts to instant injustice and cannot be condoned, giving him food and drinks and using him for community service may not be out of place.

It is however instructive to note that, once all the above treatments the suspect was subjected to were not determined by a competent court of jurisdiction, the incident amounts to extrajudicial attack on him, and therefore illegal.

What do you think?