Renowned boxer and musician, Bukom Banku, aged 43, recently made a shocking revelation during an interview Wednesday, May 29, 2024.
Banku confessed that he used to be a habitual thief at the vibrant Makola market.
During the interview, Banku was asked his past experiences with theft, prompting the celebrity to open up about his previous criminal activities.
“Yes,” Braimah Isaac Kamoko, better known as Bukom Banku, responded in Pidgin.
“At the time, we were at Bukom, my boys and I. We’d go to Makola to go steal PK [gum], money, snatching bags… Oh, I have done that before,” he further confessed, clarifying: “I stopped when I went into boxing in 1995.”
The popular boxer said: “I am a former thief but I stopped. If I say I’ve not stolen before, I’d be lying to God. There were people who were praying for me to stop and I have already.”
He said he was never caught stealing because “I’m a good runner. Once someone cries, ‘Thief, thief’, I am long gone,” emphasising his partners “Seth and Jacob – the captain” were equally good at evading capture.
A comic personality, he explained the shape their operations took back in the day.
“We’d distract people by tapping them on one side and engaging them in a conversation while one of us swiftly takes their possessions or we pretend to be interested in what they are buying or selling and we steal from them,” he said.
According to Banku, there were twins in his “squad” of “big thieves in Ghana but we have stopped”.
He distinguished what he did from “using guns” to steal, “which is armed robbery”.
“It was simply pickpocketing. At the time, we were not enlightened – 1992 to ‘93 and ‘94, thereabouts,” he added, stressing: “By ‘95, we had left this issue.”
