The only man who helped me during my ordeal is a Muslim – Cecilia Ibru

Former Chef Executive Officer of Oceanic Bank, Mrs Cecilia Ibru, has narrated her experience when she faced the challenges of the take-over of the once bubbling bank, saying a rare help she got then came from a Muslim.
According to her, it was a battle of envy and covetousness on the part of the powers that stripped her of the financial institution.
In an interview with ‘Saturday Punch’, 73-year-old Ibru said it was a terrible time for her as her husband was sick at the time.
Saying it was the reason she accepted plea bargaining, Ibru noted, “I won’t say betrayal, including (Lamido) Sanusi (the then Governor of the Central Bank) himself, but people that I thought would come and help me did not do so. However, God raised other people to help me. Back then when I was in office, if I was at home, you wouldn’t find a parking space in my compound; it was always filled with cars and people who wanted one favour or the other from the bank. But after that episode, everywhere became empty. One day, a man came to visit me at home and when he was going, there were no security personnel or driver. So, he asked what happened to them and I said the bank had withdrawn all of them on the order of Sanusi. They withdrew everything. He said that wasn’t good. The man asked me what it would cost me to put in place some security measures and I said about N1m. He said I was a popular personality and I couldn’t go around without some form of protection. He paid that N1m every month until I went to London. And when I got there, I informed him I had travelled. I can’t forget that kind of a person, and guess what, he is a Muslim.
“You see, when they offered me plea bargain as the way out, many people said I shouldn’t take it. Many of my pastors even said don’t accept it, fight it till the end, but I just told them I was fed up already. I was tired of the whole thing. I thought to myself that why should I be fighting with my whole heart when there was an alternative, even though not a nice one; pleading that you are guilty when you know that you are not. You are pleading as if you are guilty and you are agreeing with whatever they wanted when you know you didn’t do anything wrong. It wasn’t easy; my husband was sick and I didn’t want to be sick too. So, I decided to do what I had to do so I could be able to function. That was it.
“By the time I left that hospital, they had to fly me to London for treatment. The experience in the little time I spent there impacted negatively on me so I was in the hospital most of the time. Maybe the emotional aspect of it made the medicines they were giving to me not to work effectively. As soon as they discharged me, they flew me straight to London. I can’t even describe how I looked. When people saw me, they asked what happened to me and I said I didn’t know. They ran series of tests on me and I tell you that in a matter of two weeks, my eyes became clear. Meanwhile, all I did was to just lie down and walk in the garden and I went for check-up twice a week. They advised me not to think about the whole thing so as to keep my blood pressure normal. And here I am by the grace of God. If you saw me then, I looked like an 88-year-old woman. I looked at myself in the mirror then and now and I say God is awesome.”