LSP050: Ownerless Property and Stealing

Generally, for there to be the offence of stealing, the subject matter must have an owner. As such, ownership is an important element the prosecution has to prove beyond reasonable doubt before the accused can be convicted for the offence of stealing.

Unfortunately, neither the Criminal code nor the Penal code mentions “ownership”. The ‘word’ has generally be said to have been included by the Courts. It has been settled through judicial pronouncements that anything capable of being stolen must have an owner

Niki Tobi JCA (as he then was) in Onagoruwa v. State (1993) 7 NWLR (Pt. 303), 86 stated the importance of ownership in the offence of stealing, where the learned jurist opined that: “ownership is a most vital and indispensable essential or ingredient of the offence of stealing. It is the ownership upon which all other essentials or ingredients stand. It is the baseline of the offence of stealing”

The consequence of the aforementioned provision is that property without an owner cannot be said to have been stolen. Putting it in context, if someone sees money on the floor on an empty road and takes it? Can he be said to have stolen it? Morally, yes. But legally, no.

The concept of ownerless property has been statutorily provided for in section 383(5) of the Criminal Code which states that: when a thing converted has been lost by the owner and found by the person who converts it, the conversion is not deemed to be fraudulent if at the time of making the conversion, the person taking or converting the thing does not know who the owner is and believes on a reasonable ground that the owner cannot be found. There has been no Nigerian judicial authority on this statutory provision yet.

The operative phrase here is reasonable ground that the owner cannot be found. What will amount to this ground can only be determined from the fact of each case. Hence, it can reasonably be inferred that a person who picks up a ₦1000 in front of a lecturer’s office, a few minutes after the lecturer entered his office, with the intention of converting it, may be said to have stolen it since there is reasonable ground that the money might belong to the lecturer. The same decision is likely not to be reached if the money or any other lost object is found in an empty road, bush, lecture theaters, or isolated locations.

In R v Vega, (1938) 4 W.A.C.A, the concept of ownerless property came up for judicial determination. In that case, the court held that the accused person, who took some corrugated sheets which have been lying idle for a long time and which the accused believed to have been abandoned, was not guilty of theft (stealing).

In conclusion, the principle of law under the Nigerian criminal law jurisprudence is that the finder of lost property cannot be legally considered to have stolen the property. Well, morality will agree otherwise. But this shouldn’t be a concern since morality does not win in Court.

Question: If you happen to see 10Million Naira inside the bush, being a responsible citizen, will you report and return it to the nearest police station?

LSP couldn’t release an article last week because my phone spoilt. I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience. Thank you. See you next week🤗