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Ogbanago whose salary is N30, 000, earned praises from Nigerians and an award of excellence by the Chairman of UBA, Tony Elumelu, and said it never crossed his mind to keep the money that was misplaced by the customer so as to play his part in repairing the battered image of the country and to tell the outside world that there are still honest people in Nigeria.
Speaking to Sahara TV, Ogbanago narrated what made him decide to return such a huge amount of money in these hard times:
"It was at the bank's premises, after parking a car at the car park. So on my way coming back, I now saw the money, $10, 000 close to the security gate.
I was the only one, so when I picked the money, I went to the office and sat down for about three minutes thinking about what to do.
As I was thinking, I had different thoughts; in fact, 10 different thought came to me and eight of them told me to return the money, while two of them said; 'this is money, a whole lot of money. Why don't you take this money?'
But in the end, the eight superseded the other two, so I had to return the money to my Branch Operations Manager (BOM). Later on, the customer who misplaced the money came and claimed his money.
Many people have asked me if there was a camera in the security post which would have captured me if I had not returned the money.
I will say that there was no camera there and it was my conscience that made me return the money because it was not my own.
When our Chairman sent for me, he was very happy with me and confessed that he has never seen such a honest staff before. I was also happy meeting the Chairman for the first time and his words really encouraged me."
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"Sometime ago when I heard David Cameron, former Britain Prime Minister saying that Nigeria is fantastically corrupt, I decided to put him to shame that it is not all Nigerians that are corrupt.
Though there are some Nigerians who may be corrupt, there are some who are not corrupt.
Honesty is in me, it is part of me. My joy is in what Tony Elumelu did by putting my act out for all to see that there are still some Nigerians who are not corrupt despite the situation in the country."