Buruji Kashamu was named in a 1998 sealed federal indictment in the Northern District of Illinois — United States v. Catherine Wolters et al., 98 CR 329 — as 'Alaji,' the alleged leader of a heroin importation conspiracy that ran couriers from Lagos through Heathrow and Chicago O'Hare between 1993 and 1998. The lead US co-defendant, Piper Kerman, later wrote the prison memoir Orange Is the New Black (2010); the 'Alaji' figure in the book is widely identified as Kashamu.
Kashamu was arrested in the United Kingdom on a US extradition warrant in late 1998 and held at HMP Belmarsh and HMP Wandsworth. He defended on mistaken-identity grounds — arguing that the indicted 'Alaji' was his late brother Adewale Kashamu. The Bow Street Magistrates' Court accepted his evidence on 26 January 2000 (Senior District Judge Pratt), and after a series of US re-application attempts the case was finally discharged by Senior District Judge Workman on 13 May 2003. He returned to Nigeria a free man.
In May 2015 — days before he was due to be sworn in as PDP Senator for Ogun East — the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, acting on a fresh US request, sought to render him to the United States. Kashamu sought interim relief at the Federal High Court Lagos (FHC/L/CS/603/2015) and obtained an injunction from Tsoho J. restraining NDLEA from arresting, abducting or removing him from Nigeria pending the determination of his fundamental-rights suit. The Court of Appeal (Lagos Division) upheld the restraint in 2016.
He served one full Senate term — June 2015 to June 2019. He died of COVID-19 complications on 8 August 2020 at First Cardiology Consultants, Lagos. United States Department of Justice forfeiture interests in connected accounts remained open at the date of his death.
The case sits in The Republic's Stories register — not the Looted Funds Record — because no Nigerian court ever convicted him, no commission of inquiry made an adverse finding against him, and no audit traced a loss to the Federal Treasury. The US indictment is a foreign criminal charge, never tested at trial; the Nigerian record on the merits is, and will remain, blank.