Hello?

So last weekend my friend Krysty left her room to go fetch some water. She was gone maybe five minutes. When she got back to her room she noticed her phone was missing. She searched all around but couldn't locate it. She borrowed her neighbors phone to call her number, and a man answered. She asked, "Who are you? Where did you get this phone?" The man said the phone was left in his shop. When she asked where the shop was he hung up. She tried dialing the number again but he had switched it off. What's interesting is no one saw anyone enter into her room, and what's even more fascinating is the fact that there was 600 Naira on the table next to where her phone was, but he only took her phone, not the money.
Later that day she went to the phone shop to block the phone line and salvage her number for when she's able to get a new handset. When she arrived there were over 150 people waiting in line for the same thing! All of whom had their phones stolen recently. The woman at the counter told her this was "light" compared to what it usually is.
The appeal for stealing handsets (cell phones) is for re-sale value. "Used" (which may often turn out to be stolen) handsets are re-sold for more than half what a new phone would cost. You can find handsets such as these in the markets all around Jos. Just another little snippet of life in Nigeria.