By Austin Oniyokor

To say that Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain and Senator-elect, Prince Buruji Kashamu has been in the eye of the storm is to state the obvious. Against all odds, he contested and won the 28th March National Assembly election. Since then, all hell has been let loose.

To be sure, his travails or the issues related to it predate his election. But his opponents have pursued him with renewed frenzy that could safely pass for desperation ostensibly because of his election into the Senate. Before now, they discountenanced him, saying he is a political neophyte who has never contested let alone won an election. Now, the drum beat and the dance steps have changed.

It is in this context that I wish to situate a syndicated piece purportedly written by one Adekoya Boladele, with the above titled. If like he claimed, he is a political scientist and scholar on good governance, then one could imagine the kind of jaundiced advice his ilk gave while his master held sway in one of the South Western states between 2003 and 2011.

First, let me state from the outset that much as I agree with him that how the President-elect, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) handles the Kashamu case could be his first litmus test, I strongly disagree with him on the structure, context and content.

Perhaps, in his less-than-clever bid to do a hatchet job, he exhibited either his open bias or crass ignorance of the facts of the extant case. For instance, he wrote, “for myself (sic) and many fans of the show, ‘Orange Is the New Black” knowing that the villainous ‘Alhaji’ described in that movie still enjoys unabated freedom despite the pending extradition request from the United States Government is disgusting…”

Nonetheless, what is more disgusting are the lies that Boladale seeks to feed the unsuspecting members of the public with as the truth. There is nowhere in the said soap or even its synopsis where the ‘Alhaji’ was said to be Prince Buruji Kashamu. Yet, it is convenient for Boladale and his pay masters to characterise him as Prince Kashamu.

He went on to say that there is a “pending extradition request from the United States Government…” Again, nothing could be farther from the truth. This is yet another deliberate disinformation unwittingly meant to lend credence to the attempt by some powerful politicians to instigate the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and U.S. Homeland Security to abduct the senator-elect upon seeing the near impossibility of achieving that legally.

Whereas the unimpeachable fact is that besides the failed extradition attempts by the United States government against Kashamu in the United Kingdom – America’s most trusted ally – there has never been any request or court order to extradite him by any country or court whatsoever since 2003 that he was freed.

And in case Boladale did not know, there cannot be an order of extradition of a suspect from any country to another country without extradition proceedings. It is trite knowledge that an order of court only arises from a court proceedings. If a court has not exercised its jurisdiction over a matter, it cannot make an order pertaining to that matter.

The truth, which the Attorney General has himself confirmed in a case pending in the Supreme Court of Nigeria and by letter issued on 25th January 2015, is that the U.S Government has never asked for the extradition of Kashamu at any time up till today, Saturday, 25th April, 2015 – that I am writing this piece.

Kashamu

Although we have repeatedly told the story, it is again worth restating for the benefit of dispassionate minds and well-meaning members of the public.

In 1998, as a result of Kashamu’s political activities in the Republic of Benin where he assisted in installing some political leaders who later lost out, he was wrongly introduced into an indictment in the Northern District of Illinois, United States involving a group of drug pushers, members of which had been arrested and convicted in 1994 in the US and as a part of a plea bargain transaction had indicated that they had a West African link.

None of these confessed criminals mentioned his name and repeatedly indicated to their jailers that they did not know their West African accomplice by any other name than “ALAJI”

Apparently, the U.S. Embassy in Benin, which was facilitating the enquiry by the U.S. authorities as to whom the “ALAJI” could be, somehow received information from some mischief-makers that it was Kashamu. Since he appeared to fit the profile, his name was introduced into the indictment in 1998 by the U.S. authorities.

All these happened without reference to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) in Nigeria or the other relevant West African countries in which the enquiries were being made and unknown to him he regularly visited the United Kingdom in pursuit of his cotton trading business in Liverpool.

On one of such trips in 1998, he was accosted at the City Airport in London and eventually informed that there was an international arrest warrant for his arrest issued by the United States.

He was therefore detained and an application for his extradition to the US was made to the British Courts by the US authorities through the British Crown Prosecution Service. Kashmau declared from the moment of his arrest that he was not the person involved in the alleged narcotics business and that it was a case of mistaken identity.

As a result, an identification parade was conducted by the British authorities wherein the leader of the confessed criminals in the U.S. clearly stated that he was not the man they knew as “ALAJI”

However, the U.S. authorities decided not to reveal this information to the British court and were able to secure an order in their favour in 1998 for his extradition to the US.

But before this could be done, the result of the identification parade came into the hands of his lawyers early in 1999 and they immediately commenced a Habeas Corpus action in the English High Court, Queens Bench division, for his release and the vacation of the committal order made by the Court.

Now, it is not just that Kashamu is merely claiming that he is innocent of the allegations; two different courts in England, in two different judgments, have found and declared him innocent of the allegations made against him by the U.S.

The first is the English High Court of Justice (Kings Bench Division), which in its judgment of January 2000, said that the U.S. authorities actually knew that Kashamu is innocent when they suppressed evidence of an identification parade in which the ring leader of the gang (that allegedly confessed that they had a West African link called “ALAJI) said that Buruji Kashamu was not the man involved with them.

The English High Court for this reason nullified and set aside the favourable judgment obtained by the U.S. authorities against Kashamu on the basis of this suppressed exculpatory evidence.

The second judgment is that of 10th January 2003 in which District Judge Tim Workman expressly found (after 3 years of trial involving extensive oral evidence from both sides and copious documentary evidence) that the U.S Government had provided false evidence and eventually held that Kashamu was not involved in the crimes alleged and should be discharged.

The U.S. authorities did not appeal against these judgments and have made no move whatsoever in the last 11 years to extradite Kashamu.

It is noteworthy – and this is a point commentators have deliberately chosen to ignore – that the facts constituting the extradition proceedings in the UK which Kashamu was subjected to, but eventually exculpated of, are the same facts which constitute the indictment in the U.S. that his opponents and others have been trumpeting as if there are two sets of indictments – one in the U.K. and another in the U.S. – and that having been discharged and acquitted of the one in the U.K., he has that of the U.S. to contend with.

In other words, it is the same indictment that Kashamu’s opponents are talking about that the US government used as the basis for his extradition proceedings in the U.K. courts. So, if he had been discharged and acquitted of the allegations in the said proceedings which other trial is he expected to undergo in the U.S. when it was not a case of more than one set of indictment whereby he was tried and discharged in respect of one while the other is still pending in the U.S. for which he is required to undergo trial?

Moreover, Judge Norgle of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Illinois before whom the alleged indictment against Kashamu is pending has held in his ruling of 2010, on an application by Kashamu to dismiss the indictment, that Kashamu is not a fugitive from justice because, as admitted by the U.S. Government, he has never been in the United States and did not at any time escape from US custody. The English Bow Street Magistrate Court legally released him from unjustifiable incarceration in January 2003 after two judicial victories over the U.S. Government.

Any objective mind will agree that in those circumstances, Kashamu has no need to prove his innocence, but rather it is the U.S. Government (if it believes it has additional material or arguments) to approach the Nigerian authorities by due process to establish that the two British courts were wrong. In fact, all the court actions that have formed the basis of some of the twisted reports and write-ups have been at Kashamu’s instance. He has been the one going to court, both here and in the U.S. asking that his name been cleared since he had been exonerated by the impartial British courts.

It is, therefore, ludicrous for anyone to suggest that Kashamu has a duty to clear his name and hop into the next available flight to the U.S. It is akin to asking a man who escaped the assassins’ bullets to go and stand in the way of his assailants to test the power of his God. It was on the basis of the bias shown by the U.S. prosecutors in concealing the evidence that exonerated Kashamu that the British courts freed him. So how can anyone wish that Kashamu should hop on the next available flight to go and “clear” his name, as if when he gets there they are going to roll out the red carpets to welcome him and put him in a hotel or guest house? This is a man that had been told that 150 years jail term awaited his enemy! How unconscionable can people be?

It is even more inane for anyone to conclude that Kashamu’s abduction or extradition would serve as the first litmus test of the incoming administration in its fight against corruption or other societal ills given the special circumstances of this case. Indeed, if it were to be the first litmus test of the incoming administration, it should be in the observance of fair hearing, the rule of law, respect for human rights and due process.

No Nigerian Government, even under the worst of military dictatorships, should allow the victimization of it citizens irrespective of ethnic, religious or political leanings. The incoming administration has a duty to show to Nigerians and the whole world that it is a government for all Nigerians and not a few cliques, no matter how powerful.

The only Nigerian government that has ever allowed a Nigerian citizen to be so kidnapped by the U.S. Government is the Obasanjo Presidency when in 2000; it closed its eyes to the abduction of auto dealer Lanre Shittu by U.S. DEA agents in spite of the pending extradition proceedings.

What makes this abduction plan against Kashamu even more despicable is that the target of this abduction plan is now a Senator-elect of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It is an affront on the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Today, it is Kashamu. Tomorrow, it could be any other Nigerian.

I dare say that patriotism, if not morality, should inspire right thinking people to speak and act against this plan, only if we realized that injustice to one Nigerian is injustice to all Nigerians.

Dear reader, I invite you to ponder for a while what the U.S. would do to Nigeria if the Nigerian Government had the temerity to plan an abduction of a Senator of the United States? Not only would the highest government officials, including the President, suffer the U.S. visa restrictions, the entire country would suffer for it.

The last time a Nigerian Government tried to abduct its own citizen, Umaru Dikko, from the U.K., we all know how the then Military Head of State suffered humiliation and international opprobrium which cost him election three times in democratic Nigeria before memory having faded he was now able to win the Presidency this year. We should learn from our past mistakes.

Finally, I wish to implore the like of former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Prof. Tam David-West; the Serving Overseer of the Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, and Gen. Buhari’s spokesman, Engr. Rotimi Fashakin, among others, who laboured to make a distinction between the President-elect’s regime as a military ruler and now, in selling his candidacy to Nigerians, as it relates to human rights, that this is indeed his first litmus test – on human rights, due process and the rule of law. The whole world is watching!

Oniyokor is the media aide to Kashamu