Birth and Education of Babagana Kingibe
AMBASSADOR BABAGANA KINGIBE as he is popularly known, was born on the 25th of June, 1945 to the family of Mustafa Shuwa and Ya Kingi Mallam in Borno. A Kanuri from Borno, he grew up in Maiduguri and attended primary schools there. In 1958, he was admitted into the Borno Provincial Secondary School.
In 1960, he left for the United Kingdom on a government scholarship to complete his O’Level and A-level at Bishop’s Stortford College. In 1965, he received his bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of Sussex (alongside Thabo Mbeki)
Early career of Babagana Kingibe
In 1965, he returned to Nigeria and was employed as a researcher at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria. At the university, he became acquainted with the Kaduna Mafia, a group of young western-educated intellectuals, civil servants and military officers from Northern Nigeria. During the Nigerian Civil War, he became the head of features and current affairs at the Broadcasting Corporation of Northern Nigeria.
Diplomatic service
In 1972, he joined the Nigerian Foreign Service where his first posting was the Nigerian High Commission in London as a senior political counsellor and later became the head of the political desk.
Following the 1976 Nigerian coup d’état attempt, Kingibe was seconded to the Supreme Military Headquarters (SMHQ) as the Principal Secretary, Political, from 1976 to 1979, where he was involved in the planning of the military’s transfer of power programme, states creation and national delimitation, local government reforms and the constitutional drafting committee of the Second Nigerian Republic.In 1981, at the age of 36, he was appointed the Nigerian Ambassador to Greece, Cyprus and later Pakistan between 1981 and 1985. In 1986, Kingibe became a permanent secretary in the presidency of General Ibrahim B
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