They once occupied higher positions back in the days, but many years after, no one knows where they could be now and what they are doing; ELEOJO IDACHABA writes.
Madam Cecilia Ibru, as she was fondly called, was the managing director and chief executive officer of Oceanic Bank, one of the ‘happening’ banks in the country. She began her working career at the Ibru Organisation as project director in 1978. After two years in this role, she went on to serve as international finance coordinator, a position she held until 1990 when she began to work in Oceanic Bank as general manager.
After seven years, she was promoted to the position of managing director and CEO. The bank began as a small family-owned institution, but grew into one of the nation’s largest publicly quoted institutions during her stewardship despite allegations of financial recklessness against her. For instance, on August 13, 2009, she was among five bank CEOs who were dismissed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) over financial scandals.
Writing about Ibru, Oladapo Sofowora said, “At her prime as the head of Oceanic Bank, Mrs. Cecilia Ibru commanded immense respect from all and sundry. She was a socialite of high repute with a heavy financial war chest to fund her lifestyle. She was classy, highly cerebral, cosmopolitan, stylish and well-composed. She is well lettered in finance and economics. Her home was a Mecca of sorts for favour seekers who needed one financial help or the other. She was indeed generous to a fault. During her reign, several businesses benefited from her milk of kindness until everything went awry.” Lately, no one knows where this woman with a large heart is again.
Clement Ebri
Clement Ebri was the governor of Cross River state who was elected on the platform of the National Republican Convention (NRC) between January 1992 and November 17, 1993, during the aborted Third Republic. He left office after the military coup that brought Gen. Sani Abacha to power in 1993. Ebri was said to be a strong supporter of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, who had initiated the short-lived third republic. Before entering politics, he had an impressive working career in the private sector, for instance, he was editor of the Nigerian Chronicle and at different times director of Mercantile Bank of Nigeria and Savannah Bank of Nigeria. Prior to 2006, he was a member of All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) but left the party to become a founding member of the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) as its national chairman for reasons best known to him.
In that same year, he urged the federal government led by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo to do everything possible to reform the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in order to ensure free and fair elections in the 2007 general elections. After that election, he led his party into the Government of National Unity (GNU) of late President Umaru Yar’Adua. Even though he was being condemned for the move, he stoutly defended it that PPA had not compromised in joining the GNU.
“We felt we should as well help to stabilise the polity and add value to governance,” he noted. In 2009, he was full of praises for the Appeal Court in Port Harcourt’s stand on annulling the decision of Abia State Elections Tribunal to replace Theodore Orji of PPA as governor in place of Onyema Ugochukwu of the PDP. In 2009, barely two weeks after Ikedi Ohakim as Imo state governor defected from PPA to PDP, Ebri resigned from the party chairmanship position claiming that he was stepping aside from politics; however, just when the APC was formed, he joined the fold. In 2018, he was among the major contenders for the position of national chairman, but lost to Adams Oshiomhole. Since then not much has been heard about him.
Helen Esuene
Mrs. Helen Esuene was the minister of state for health. Later, she was moved to the environment and housing ministry under former President Olusegun Obasanjo between 2005 and 2007. On leaving office following the end of Obasanjo’s regime, she contested election and won the senatorial seat to represent Akwa Ibom South in the National Assembly from 2011 to 2015.
Esuene was elected into the Senate in 2011 and did not return because she had to honour an agreement she made with her people.
“When I was campaigning for the Senate in my senatorial district, the unwritten agreement among the people of my district was that each federal constituency that occupies the senatorial seat should go for two terms and then it would move to the next federal constituency. You know when Senator Udo Udoma was here, he was representing Ikot Abasi federal constituency and he was here for two terms. Thereafter, Mrs. Ekaette came on board and she represented Eket federal constituency.
“I am from Eket as well. So, by next year, Eket federal constituency would have done two tenures. And it is supposed to move to the third federal constituency which is Oron. And when I was going to contest, it was a deep pushing during my campaign. And the issue was that ‘since you are going for the first time, are you sure that you would not want to go back’? That was the fear they had. And I gave them my word that I would do one term and leave. So, I wouldn’t want to go back on my words,” she said.
Esuene was a first lady of Old South Eastern states and almost became first lady of Nigeria because her late husband, Brigadier General Udoakagha Jacob Esuene (retd.) was the presidential aspirant of then defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP). Writing about her, a social commentator, Nseobong Okon-Ekong said, “As there is no school for widows to go learn how to overcome the emotional trauma of losing their spouse, Chief (Mrs.) Helen Esuene, wife of the late former military governor of the then Cross River state, Chief Udokaha J. Esuene had to depend on instinct to give meaning to her life again. If she were to write a book now, it would focus on how widows of famous men can find their feet after the demise of their husbands.
“There may be no guarantee that what has worked for her may work for someone else, but she has since put together other workable approaches in a book that she is tinkering with. Her late husband was a distinguished pilot who flew fighter planes in the Nigerian Air Force. He became a military governor for seven years, reigning over what is now Akwa Ibom and Cross River states. In the run-up to the 1993 presidential election, he was one of the candidates seeking the presidential ticket of the Social Democratic Party (SDP).”
Lately, not much has been heard about this woman again.
