Dr. Mrs. Cecilia Ibru, the sacked managing director of Oceanic Bank, would have successfully fled the country to avoid being investigated about on her level of involvement in running down Oceanic Bank, if not for the eagle eyes of the security operatives at the airport, seaports and borders.
Security sources informed P.M.News in Abuja this morning that Mrs. Ibru attempted to escape on Monday night, but was stopped by the State Security Service (SSS).
According to our sources, Mrs. Ibru planned to fly away to Ghana with a private jet allegedly owned by Barrister Jimoh Ibrahim, Chief Executive Officer, NICON group.
This action, it was gathered, necessitated a presidential directive that all the affected officials of the five banks, should not only be stopped from travelling abroad, but that their international passports should be seized by the relevant agencies pending the outcome of investigations into their cases.
The EFCC spokesman, Femi Babafemi, this morning in a telephone interview, confirmed the arrest of 11 chieftains of the sacked banks, adding that anyone who fails to honour the commission’s invitation will be arrested at the close of work today.
“We want to believe they are all gentlemen, but any of them who becomes ungentlemanly will be treated as such,” he said.
In an exclusive interview with P.M.News yesterday, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, said, “there has been serious pressure from the chieftains of the affected banks and highly placed individuals like businessman, politicians and traditional rulers, calling on the president to force me to rescind my decision. But the president told me never to be deterred. He is solidly behind my action.”
Sanusi regretted that in a country of 140 million population, our children have no role models or decent people to look up to.
He said: “The way things are going, if we had not taken the action we took, our children will grow up to discover that honesty and hard work do not pay. They will just believe that the best way to rob a bank is to set up one, allow stakeholders and depositors to put in money and thereafter announce the collapse of the bank and do away with the funds. In my time as CBN governor, I will not allow it.”
Meanwhile, following the arrest of the CEOs and directors of Finbank, Union Bank and Afribank, the anti-graft agency has declared wanted Mr. Erastus Akingbola and Mrs. Cecilia Ibru of Intercontinental and Oceanic banks respectively.
An EFCC source confirmed to P.M.News this morning that the two bank bosses and their directors were declared wanted after they failed to honour an invitation by the agency for them to report for questioning yesterday.
The 24-hour grace given to them expired last night, thus, the EFCC has launched a manhunt for Akingbola and Ibru as well as their directors who are believed to have gone underground to avoid arrest.
P.M.News, however, learnt that Akingbola yesterday instituted a legal suit for his reinstatement as the Chief Executive of Intercontinental Bank Plc.
A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos granted the embattled bank chief leave to apply for a judicial review of his removal last Friday by the CBN.
In the substantive suit where the CBN and its governor, Sanusi, are joined as defendants, Akingbola is seeking among other things, N50 billion as exemplary damages against the respondents.
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