LAGOS, Nigeria — “My seven best friends are in the grave. I watched life go by; I went through hell”.
With these chilling words, Evangelist Christian Chuka—a former international drug dealer turned prison reformer—opened up on The Honest Bunch Podcast about his descent into the underworld, his grueling eight-year sentence in a Swedish prison, and the devastating body count of his former life.
Born into Poverty, Sent to “Slavery”
Chuka’s journey into crime began not out of malice, but desperation. Raised in severe poverty where “poverty was written all over our faces,” he grew up as a rebellious youth in Aba, Nigeria. In a desperate attempt to discipline him, his parents sent him at age 12 to Cameroon under the guise of a trade apprenticeship—an experience he bluntly characterizes as “slavery”.
After escaping back to Nigeria, Chuka found himself handling massive amounts of cash while managing trade inventory in Aba. The sudden exposure to unearned wealth as an uneducated teenager skewed his sense of reality and fueled an intense pressure to achieve financial dominance at all costs.
The Fake Gambian Passport & European Bust
Driven by societal peer pressure to build multi-story mansions and outshine his peers, Chuka launched into high-stakes international drug trafficking. Operating under forged identities—including a fake Gambian passport under the alias “Omar Bashir”—he moved hard drugs across European borders, navigating complex transit routes between Germany, Scandinavia, and neighboring regions.
His luck eventually ran out when immigration and border security flagged his forged credentials, culminating in a high-profile arrest and an eight-year sentence in Sweden’s maximum-security correctional system.
“I Went Through Hell to Save the Youth”
While Chuka survived his prison sentence, many in his inner circle were not as fortunate. “My seven best friends are in the grave,” Chuka revealed, noting that the vast majority of his contemporaries met violent ends or succumbed to the toxic lifestyle of illicit drug syndicates.
Now fully reformed, Chuka runs the Abounding Grace Foundation (also known as @prisoner voice). Channeling his painful past into a mission for social change, he has personally visited over 258 prisons across Africa—including facilities in South Africa, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, and Nigeria—to preach reform, advocate for inmates, and deter young people from taking up a life of crime.
“I don’t want them to go through my journey,” Chuka said. “I’m talking because I need to save our youth”.
Watch the full interview on YouTube here.
