CECILIA IBRU, A CONVICT, JOINS BODE GEORGE IN THE BIG HOUSE!

Yes, it is real and it is happening in Nigeria as the matron of the Ibru previously untouchable family of Warri, Cecil Ibru, is now a convicted felon. She was found guilty of bank fraud and sentenced to prison for a paltry time of eighteen months. However Icheoku says kudos to the Madam Farida Waziri led EFCC that achieved this hitherto unimaginable feat, sending Nigeria's very well connected socialite to prison. Icheoku says Cecilia Ibru's guilty verdict, added to the former Bode George's, shows that the case of Nigeria is not completely hopeless as many of us tend to believe. If a Bode George and now an Ibru could be convicted in a Nigerian court by a Nigerian judge and sentenced to prison, then there is some flicker of hope that someday the country Nigeria will be a legal equalizing ground for everyone irrespective of his/her social standing.

It shall become Uhuru in Nigeria the day the legal tenet of equality under the law reigns supreme and Nigeria's prodigious 'big men and women' no longer simply get away with breaking the law just because they are rich and connected. That day, Nigeria's problems will become 3/4 solved and Icheoku looks forward to such a day with great excitement that at last Nigeria has truly come of age as a civilized society of laws and not men.

On a lighter side, Icheoku wonders if the Ibrus did not 'make the judge in this case 'an offer he cannot refuse' or was the judge simply one of a kind special person who is tired of the rot in Nigeria and choose to make a statement. Anyway, thank you Judge Abutu and we pray there will be more of your courageous and incorruptible types to emerge within the Nigerian judiciary and clean the Augean stable that is a Nigeria profusely corrupted. To Madam Convict Cecilia Ibru, Icheoku says, please say hi to the other convict Bode George when you get to prison to begin your term as a jail-bird. What a shame that you dipped your fatty hands into bank's money and brought public shame and odium to the once enviable Ibru family.

As managing Director of Oceanic Bank, Cecilia Ibru allegedly granted credit facilities totaling about 747 billion Naira half of which went to his family and friends. Lest Icheoku forgets, we will like to ask Cecilia Ibru what was she doing with all those properties seized from her valued at more than 190 billion Naira or did she not learn any moral lesson from the biblical teachings in Ecclesiastes 1:2 while nesting her greedy fat stomach? It is quite unfortunate that a woman and a mother should be such a grand-scale thief and robber/looter of the treasury of a bank under her care and administration. What a shame to womanhood, Cecilia Ibru!