Senator Buruji Kashamu died on Saturday due to COVID-19 complications at a Lagos hospital.
Below are some things you should know about the late senator:
1. Kashamu represented Ogun East senatorial district from 2015 to 2019.
2. Kashamu was the Ogun State governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2019 election.
3. He was indicted for conspiracy to import and distribute heroin in1998 by a grand jury in the Northern District of Illinois, US.
4. On December 18, 1998, the UK’s Metropolitan Police arrested Kashamu, who was travelling with a Benin passport.
5. He returned to Nigeria in 2003 from Britain after a British court refused a US extradition request over uncertainty about Kashamu’s identity.
6. Kashamu had told the court that he was not the leader of the drug-smuggling conspiracy but his brother, Adewale Kashamu, who he closely resembles.
7. 1n 2015, there was a stand-off at his residence after the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency attempted to arrest him for extradition to the US.
8. A federal high court in Abuja in May 2020, barred the FG from extraditing him.
9. He sued former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, for libel for stating that Kashamu was a fugitive from US justice.
10. Kashamu was the founder of Western Lotto Limited, one of Nigeria’s lottery operators
(PUNCH)
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