Kingibe Ireti Heebah

Ireti Heebah Kingibe (born 2 June 1954) is a Nigerian civil engineer and politician. She was elected member of the Senate representing the FCT in the 2023 Nigerian Senate elections under the Labour Party.

Her education started at Emotan Preparatory School in 1966, after which she attended Queen's College Lagos from 1966 to 1967 and Washington Irving High School from 1970 to 1973 for her secondary school education. She bagged a degree in civil engineering from the University of Minnesota between 1975 and 1980.

Between 1978 and 1979, Kingibe worked as a quality control engineer with Bradley Precast Concrete Inc. She then moved on to work as an engineer with the Minnesota Department of Transportation Design unit from 1979 to 1991.

She returned to Nigeria for her mandatory one-year service year between 1981 and 1982, where she was posted as a project supervisor with the Nigerian Air Force base in Ikeja, Lagos.

In 1982, she worked as a planning engineer with the New Nigeria Construction Company in Kaduna. In 1985, she left New Nigeria Construction Company to work as a consultant for Belsam Limited.

Kingibe became the regional engineer for Lodigiani Nigeria Limited in Lagos between 1990 and 1994. She currently works as a senior partner with Kelnic Associates, Abuja.

Her political career began in 1990 with her appointment as adviser to the national chairman of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP). In 2003, she was the FCT senatorial candidate for the All Nigeria Peoples Party.

She defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2006, but in 2014 joined the All Progressive Congress (APC) due to political challenges within PDP. In 2015, she ran for the senatorial seat under APC but later withdrew.

In 2022, she joined the Labour Party, became its FCT senatorial candidate, and won the 2023 Nigerian Senate election. Before the elections, she pledged her basic salary to a special fund to address infrastructural deficits in rural communities within Abuja.

She was named the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Women Affairs in the 10th Senate on 8 August 2023. On 28 February 2023, INEC declared her the winner of the FCT senatorial election, defeating three-term Senator Philip Aduda. She contested against opposition parties’ claims of electoral rigging, alleging bribery of electoral officers and an attack on the Gwarinpa collation center.