U.S. Drops Extradition Call As Kashamu Dies At 62

By GWG Staff

The United States Government was on Saturday set to drop extradition charges against one of Nigeria’s most colourful politicians after it emerged that the effervescent Senator Buruji Kashamu has died.

The colourful political colossus who was perpetually dogged by drug-trafficking charges and the snare of extradition to the United States died at the age of 62.

His former Senate colleague, Senator Murray Ben-Bruce confirmed the death of the former lawmaker on his twitter handle on Saturday evening.

He reportedly died of COVID-19 at First Cardiology Consultants in Lagos, the same hospital where Mallam Abba Kyari and Senator Abiola Ajimobi died of the same pandemic.

He said:

“I have just lost my good friend of forever to #COVID19. Until his death, Sen. Buruji Kashamu and I were inseparable. He died today at First Cardiology Consultants, in Lagos. May his gentle soul rest in peace. I pray his family and loved ones the fortitude to bear this heavy loss.”

Senator Kashamu was a financier of a faction of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in Ogun State. He mastered the act of using judicial injunctions to have his way and put himself almost always as a factor in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in Ogun State.

Kashamu made a big bang in the Nigerian political scene in 2003 after he escaped extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States where he was wanted on drug trafficking charges.

He had been apprehended by the UK authorities in 1998 after entering the country with a stash of cash up to $230,000.

Though the US authorities requested his extradition, the British authorities refused having not been satisfactorily convinced that Buruji Kashamu was the real person they wanted.

Kashamu pleaded that a deceased brother who bore similar looks was the one who really committed the crimes in America.

Returning to Nigeria he initially hobnobbed with President Olusegun Obasanjo who used him against local political rivals in their local Ogun State, but Dr. Obasanjo subsequently pulled away from him describing him as a drug baron.

Till he died, the snare of extradition to the United States was always a shadow around his activities. When he recently fell ill and moved into isolation at First Consultants, the rumour mill immediately went into motion that he was fleeing from the Americans who it was claimed had gotten the nudge of the Nigerian government to give him up.

Alas with his death announced now, his name would forever be freed from the US extradition list. Perhaps, only if the Americans will believe that the man who died this Saturday, August 8 was Buruji Kashamu who slipped through their hands.

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