Boxing celebrity Bukom Banku, 43, has revealed he was once a regular thief at the bustling Makola market.

He said this on Accra 100.5 FM's Ayekoo Ayekoo midmorning show, Wednesday, May 29, 2024.

Host Nana Romeo asked if he ever got into the habit of stealing.

“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.”

He warned people practicing what he had stopped in Makola, saying: “Times have changed. If you are caught in Makola today… You must stop. Pickpocketing, fraud and everything, it’s not good for yourself. Looks, this thing could end in your death.”

The heavyweight boxer who retired in 2023 also argued, unlike others, he believes ultimate judgement happens while one is alive and not “at the cemetery”.