Kashamu: US Court Ruling on My Possible Extradition for Drug Trafficking, a Mistaken Identity

By Akinwale Akintunde

The senator representing Ogun East senatorial district in the Senate, Buruji Kashamu, has denied any involvement in drug dealing as alleged in a recent ruling of the Appeal Court in the United States of America.

Kashamu insisted that the court’s ruling demanding his extradition to the US to face criminal charges was a case of mistaken identity.

Reacting in Lagos at the weekend to some media reports, which had it that a US court upheld the trafficking case against him and ordered him to be extradited, Kashamu said the reports were the latest in the series of efforts orchestrated by his political opponents to run him down.

He said the media interpretation that the latest ruling, which was based on a suit he instituted against his attempted abduction is totally unfounded, vexatious and malicious.

“My attention has been drawn to some mischievous media reports being the latest in a series of efforts orchestrated by my political opponents to call a dog a bad name and hang it. Thus, I find the need to set the records straight and put a stop to their devious attempts to make a mountain out of a molehill.

“The undisputable fact is that a judgment of an American court cannot supersede the judgments of the British and Nigerian courts. It should be noted that it’s the British that colonised Nigeria and we adopted their legal system. Therefore, if the British courts gave two judgments which have not been appealed till date (14 years after) and the same have been affirmed by several Nigerian courts, how then can anyone say that the recent US court ruling, which arose from a suit I filed against my abduction, is superior or has overriding effect over the previous and subsisting judgments of the British and Nigerian courts,” he stated.

Kashamu explained that he had faced two extradition proceedings in the United Kingdom at the instance of the United States and the British court found that it was a case of mistaken identity after four rigorous years of trial.

According to him, in 1998, while he was on a business trip to the United Kingdom in pursuit of his cotton trading business in Liverpool, he was arrested at City Airport in London and detained pursuant to an arrest warrant issued on the basis of an indictment in the United States in which the name “Alaji” had been introduced as party to an alleged offences of importation of narcotics into US.

“I have never visited or resided in the US and certainly have never been involved in any business not to talk of a criminal activity whatsoever in the US. Although, I declared from the moment of arrest that I was not the person involved in the alleged narcotics business and that it was a case of mistaken identity, the British courts made an order for my committal pending my extradition to the US.

“Fortunately, my lawyers came across some exculpatory evidence, which the US government had concealed from the courts in the extradition proceedings. The evidence was the outcome of a photo identification parade for the purpose of identifying the said ‘Alaji,’ that was held in the US attorney’s office..

“It should be noted that there is no any extradition proceedings against me anywhere in the world. The last one they purportedly brought after the siege to my residence was dismissed by the Federal High Court, Abuja, on July 1, 2015.

He added that no fresh extradition proceedings can be brought against him as he had twice won the extradition proceedings against him in London where he was tried at the instance of the US government and the one they brought to Nigeria has been dismissed by the court, hence “the case is dead.

“Any other purported extradition proceedings or abduction is illegal. I am not afraid of anything because I know my rights under the law,” he concluded.