It’s been quite a while now since they were seen in public functions and even though they are very much around, not much has been heard about them again; ELEOJO IDACHABA writes.
Sarah Jibril
Mama Sarah Jibril, as she is popularly called, was the special adviser to former President Goodluck Jonathan between 2011 and 2015 on Ethics and Values. At least, that was her last public appointment in recent memory. Before then, she had contested presidential elections in the country as a lone ranger from 1992 under the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) through the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Progressive Action Congress (PAC). In all of these, she never had the overwhelming support of her fellow women even though the same women had complained about being marginalised by men over the years.
The most amazing one was the 2011 election in which she contested against Jonathan for the ticket. Out of the over 5,000 delegates including several women that thronged the Eagles Square, venue of the exercise, she scored only one vote, which means that the vote was hers. And reacting to that in an interview, she said, “My loss at the primaries would continue to haunt the women folk in the country for a long time to come.”
However, after that election, Jonathan created the Office of Ethics and Values in the Presidency and made her his special adviser. As a social reformer, she was noted for her advocacy about the emancipation of women and children. She is someone who believes that the missing link in society is the absence of ethical education for effective human development. That was why she authored a book on Ethics for Development in 2006. In the capacity as SA to Jonathan, she advocated for a national curriculum that would ensure freedom from corruption at all levels. She was, however, notorious for taking on all opponents of Jonathan to the cleaners, calling them mannerless people devoid of home training. As a woman with a high sense of decorum, she frowned upon the level of indecent dressing among ladies as responsible for the growing rate of sexual violence prevalent then. Even though she was hugely criticised for it, she maintained her stand on the matter.
After Buhari came to power in 2015, she was said to have declared enthusiastically that the retired General would fight corruption head-on as against previous administrations. Following the misfortunes of the PDP in 2015, she was said to have jumped ship and formed Justice Must Prevail Party (JMPP) and became its chairman. Since then, not much has been heard about her again even as age is no longer on her side.
Mvendaga Jibo
Professor Mvendaga Jibo is a scholar, journalist, author and politician. In the 70s, he was the editor of New Nigeria Newspapers in Kaduna. During the Second Republic, he was a commissioner for education in Benue state under the administration of the now late Aper Aku, then governor of the state. He later became the deputy publicity secretary of the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) in 1982.
Jibo was born in Zaki Biam in Benue state and attended Zaki Biam Primary School before he proceeded to Government Secondary School, Katsina-Ala. Thereafter, he went to St. Louis College in Jos and later attended the University of Ibadan. While at Ibadan, he was the student union public relations officer. In search of further knowledge, he went to the University of Birmingham on a commonwealth scholarship. In 1974, he joined the Political Science Department of the University of Calabar. Jibo later entered journalism as a politics writer of a Marxist and idealistic bent. He was at one point with the Daily Times of Nigeria from 1977-1979 where he wrote in a column titled ‘The Political Notes of Mvendaga Jibo.’
In 1977, he entered politics and defeated a veteran politician to win a seat at the Constituent Assembly. While in the Assembly, he teamed up with the likes of Paul Unongo, Paul Belabo and Solomon Lar to form Club 19, a political association that later merged with other groups to form the NPP. He later joined the dominant National Party of Nigeria (NPN), but the relationship was short-lived as he returned to the NPP in 1982.
Jibo at other times was at the Political Science Department of the University of Jos. In an interview published in Intervention in 2016, in an interview published in Intervention under the title: ‘Joseph Tarka: Mvendaga Jibo’s Explosives’ he dealt essentially with the forgotten legacy of the late Joseph Tarka. In it, Jibo was reported as saying that Idoma people have the problem of producing the governor of the state because they are narrow-minded. According to him, the analogy did not call for that. He said he was merely recasting Professor Billy Dudley, his former teacher’s analysis in the book, Parties and Politics in Northern Nigeria in which the author indicated that the Idoma and other ethnic minorities in the Middle Belt abandoned Tarka’s agitation for creation of states.
“This did not follow that I would single out Idoma and describe them as narrow- minded,” he insisted. He said such a statement is too far from the way he has been trained to reason and from the reality he has dealt with. Jibo stated that he was not brought up to deny whatever he says, but that the context and subject matter of the interview did not warrant what was attributed to him. If not corrected, said Jibo, that portion of the interview stood to make him an enemy of so many friends of his from the Idoma ethnic group as well as of Senator David Mark whom the portion of the interview held up as having deceived the Idoma people in relation to creating Apa state.
Not much has been heard about this man who was one of the founding fathers of the modern Benue elite class.
James Ogebe
Justice James Ogebe, a retired Supreme Court judge, was also a one-time Chief Justice of Benue state. He was born on March 22, 1940, and went through primary school in Igumale and Katsina-Ala all in Benue between 1946 and 1955. Thereafter, the quest for secondary education took him to the famous Government College, Keffi, and later to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, between 1963 and 1967, where he studied Law. He was called to the Bar on June 28, 1968. He joined the civil service as a state counsel in the Ministry of Justice of the former Benue Plateau state in 1968, and began the long and steady progression through the ranks until he became the acting director of public prosecutions in 1971. Ogebe eventually climbed to the judicial arm of the government in 1974 and held several positions, including the acting Chief Judge of the state in September, 1987. On October 31, 1991, he was further elevated in the judicial hierarchy when he was appointed a justice of the Court of Appeal and sworn in on December 3, 1991. He was eventually elevated to the Supreme Court in 2008. While in that capacity, he spoke extensively against same sex marriage, capital punishment and others. However, his career almost got messed up because of the controversial ruling he gave about the 2007 presidential election which the winner himself, the late Yar’Adua, admitted was flawed.
He was the chairman of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal which accepted to validate the April 2007 election of Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan ticket.
Since he left the Bench, not much has been heard about him again.