Pastor Bribena marks 24th wedding anniversary.

THE MAN MIEBI BRIBENA

Miebi Bribena has a mind made up of several compartments, each self-contained in its glory. The evidence is to be seen in his newfound multi-purpose venture. The Baraza complex, for instance, offers enough room for every noble idea that seeks expression. There is sufficient space for conferences, space for shopping, space for financial transactions, and a very private space for worship.

What’s more, Miebi Bribena wants to demonstrate to every son and daughter of Glory Land, to say nothing of friends of Bayelsa, that it is possible to construct a suspended motor park, ascending in a spiral all the way up to the parking point, as may be found in the best cities of the world, including Dubai.

That project is virtually close to completion at the intersection between Emmanuel Otiotio Road and Melford Okilo Road, Yenagoa. Bribena believes that Bayelsa has a great potential to develop in the days ahead. What was not possible in the last eight years under Henry Seriake Dickson, he maintains, will be possible under the government of Senator Douye Diri.

Miebi Bribena is a good example of what one man can do for himself, if he identifies his talents and deploys them to profitable uses and large-hearted causes. He believes it is his duty to work for the benefit of his neighbour, and that it is only fit and proper that a man should be of service to the society into which he was born.

He is easily described as purpose-driven. He evinces, in all, a commitment to a higher calling. He has since claimed for himself the blessings that may be found in that cryptic passage in the book of Daniel which speaks of being inhabited by “an excellent spirit,” an anointed status privy only to the called.

Bribena, to say the least, has a great business acumen. He is also blessed with an abundant measure of fellow-feeling, and the extensive reach of a giving hand. He is the chief executive officer of Baraza Multi-purpose Co-operative Society, what he calls “a confluence of prosperity.” He is shocked by the fact that two thousand wealthy people on the face of the earth are holding in thrall the destinies of four billion people. It’s a great imbalance he wants to correct, in his own small way.

He wants to see how the wealth of the world can be spread evenly, and give meaning to life in the most desperately deprived households. His mission tallies with the goals of the United Nations, namely to eradicate poverty, ensure zero hunger, reduce inequality, provide affordable housing, offer scholarship to progressive minds, and to achieve all these by the year 2030.

Bribena’s credentials speak for themselves, without adornment, without garnish. His competence as an architect is tried, tested and trusted, such that Miebi Bribena can provide a credible template if he comes under compulsion to design a low-cost housing estate in Jos metropolis, or build a high-rise residential building at Lekki peninsular.

Anyone ready to take an overview of the Niger Delta University, Amassoma, as it is today would give credit to the architect who designed the new campus of the university. The outlay of the buildings, their structural integrity, and the interior finish speak of a project conceived by an excellent mind.

Bribena’s mind got into full gear when, as a young graduate of architecture, he supervised projects on various sites in the one-year space during which he served his nation as a corps member in Lafia, Nassarawa State. He brought to his assignment the same concentration of all his mental faculties that always led to salutary results.

Miebi Bribena speaks of his career objectives in concrete terms. He articulates a desire to contribute to the everyday well-being of people, to give people around him a better lease of life and concrete hopes about tomorrow. As he puts it, he means “to apply my intellect to the growth of an organisation, enhance its products and corporate image, thereby causing its profit margin to increase, while still touching the lives of many in composite terms, financial, material and spiritual.”

Miebi Bribena gained admission to read Architecture at the University of Jos, Plateau State, in 1988. He focused on his purpose and graduated with confident grades in 1992. He found the weather just cool enough to inspire the welter of design concepts flitting through his head. There was no time to waste. He decided forthwith to pursue his passion to acquire a higher degree in the same discipline.

In 1995, he emerged as the proud holder of a Masters degree in Architecture from the selfsame University of Jos, Plateau State. Fortified in training and emboldened by his confidence in what he knew, he embarked on the one-year mandatory service to Nigeria in the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC. It turned out to be the defining year in the life of the young architect.

Entrusted with the role of project supervisor in the state capital, Lafia, Nasarawa local government area, he was relied upon to design many structures before the civil engineers got underway. The experience he gained that year stayed with him through his next assignment as site supervisor and project manager at Tamief International Limited, Lagos.

In 1999, having been outside his home state, Bayelsa, three years after it was created, he returned to his roots to establish his presence at the Yenagoa-based firm Eternity Consult Limited. In his capacity as chief executive officer and managing director, he saw to the day to day running of his own company until 2006 when he secured a place as Senior Architect in the Works and Services Department of the Niger Delta University, Wilberforce Island, Bayelsa State.

He was well equipped for the task at hand and he discharged his duties so well that, two years later, he was moved to the Physical Planning Unit where he stayed till 2014, designing, planning, and supervising projects. The evidence is to be seen today at the permanent site of the Niger Delta University, Wilberforce Island.

Six years ago, in 2014, Bribena left the university setting to pursue a dream that had been teasing his imagination for so long. He saw himself at the head of a non-governmental agency, planning, co-ordinating, directing and managing the affairs of a co-operative society that would bloom into a bazaar from which many indigent and dispossessed citizens in his homeland can receive succour and hope for a better future.

That dream has since materialized as Baraza Renaissance Network Initiative. Under the auspices of Baraza, students can secure scholarships, farmers can be sure of loans to enable them acquire everything they need to grow into agricultural giants. Anyone with an ambition to build a house could get professional advice and financial propulsion to do so in record time, and small scale business ventures are sure to grow in leaps and bounds with a goodwill push of funds from Baraza, so long as they register as members of the cooperative with an initial fee.

From his younger days, Miebi Bribena showed signs that he would not take his responsibilities lightly, and he proved it between 1986 and 1988, when he served as Chairman, Disciplinary Committee of the Student Representative Council at the Federal Government College, Warri, Delta State. In his undergraduate days, he was active first as spokesman and later as President, Student Architects Association, Department of Architecture, University of Jos, Plateau State.

Throughout his one-year of national service, he took seriously his placement as national public relations officer of the Christian Corpers Fellowship. From 2008 to 2011, he was a member of the Bayelsa State Inter-ministerial committee on urban regeneration, and for all of one full year, 2010 to 2011, he was the public relations officer of the Nigeria Institute of Architects, NIA, Bayelsa State chapter. In all of these, he proved himself to be a man of dependable character, always acting on the side of propriety and good conduct.

Miebi is proud of his professional qualifications. In 2011, he became a member of the Architects Registration Council of Nigerian, Arcon, and later that same year an affiliate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Ariba. In 2018, for his spirited efforts to improve the livelihood of the lowly in society, and his ability to spread the message of peace and harmony in a world of strife, he received recognition as an Ambassador of Peace with an award from the United Nations Positive Livelihood Award Centre.

Bribena’s acts of philanthropy, if they were to be reeled out, would rate as a catalogue of excessive kindness. Miebi holds to heart the very tenets upon which his beloved father, F.M. Bribena, brought up his children. “My father left two legacies for us to build upon,” he says, “his integrity and education. There were his solid fronts, and I have never wavered from them. I believe that integrity is worth cultivating as a character trait, and I have had a good education such as the Commonwealth can allow.

“With the conscious help of my father and the generous assistance of my elder brother, I was privileged to attend some of the best schools in the Commonwealth in my time. I have been trained to maintain peace, to fight against oppression and to detest corruption, even if I may lose material gain for a moment.”

By his own admission, Bribena says he works to earn money for the comfort of his family, for the benefit of humanity, and for global evangelism. “My family and I live on forty percent of my income, the remaining sixty percent goes for the work of God and humanity,” says he. “The desire to improve the life of the average Niger Deltan, and our Ijaw brethren in particular, has been paramount in my financial agenda, and I have lived the greater part of my adult life working for the benefit of our people.”

Miebie Bribena is grateful that, by what he believes to be the special grace of God, he has been privileged to have access to resources, and to be a blessing to people in his own little way, even as his father taught him. His open heart of compassion and understanding manifests in the scholarship awards he granted sixty-five Ijaw students at Niger Delta University.

Three other sons of Ijaw land are also on his scholarship at the University of Accra, Ghana. Two more are benefitting from his largesse in America, and two others can testify to enjoying Bribena’s scholarship in British universities. He has also sent a number of promising sons and daughters of Bayelsa stock for vocational training in South Africa.

Miebi Bribena is not found wanting at the home front. Bent on making a mark in his birth place, he deployed earth moving equipment and trucks to open an access road in Agbere. The chiefs saw the determination of their son to finish the project. They saw his goodwill, and were happy for it. They stopped him and, instead, compelled the original contractor to undertake the work for which he had been paid.

Bribena’s giving spirit went on the look-out for someone else to help. Encouraged by the new concrete roads in his neighbouring Odoni, Bribena donated tricycles to five young men to ply the community. He ran into two Ijaw ladies trying to make out a living from welding, and bought machines for their use. He also opened and equipped barbing salons for two Ijaw boys with a passion for that business line, to say nothing of a laundry for another chap in Yenagoa, and a boutique for yet another. For each of these, he gave a minimum of one million naira as seed money for their business concerns.

The Federal Technical College, Tungbo, Bayelsa State, and members of the Ijaw Nation Forum have benefitted from Bribena’s generosity in sundry ways. Secondary schools in Bayelsa have received donation of notebooks. Car gifts have gone to at least five Ijaw brothers, ten thousand dollars for a critical medical operation, and twenty thousand dollars to assist the career of a talented Ijaw music star.

Bribena is also known to have given interventionist support of ten thousand dollars to a stranded doctoral student at the University of Port Harcourt. At festive seasons like Christmas, Easter and New Year, he takes it upon himself to feed as many mouths as he can reach by distributing bags of rice and sharing cows to the people of his home town.

Over the years, Miebi Bribena has been involved with the fluctuating fortunes of politics, acting under the conviction that he is a critical stakeholder concerned about how the government of Bayelsa is run. In 2015, in fact, he was a local government coordinator for the All Progressives Congress, APC, gubernatorial elections. He has since returned to espouse the founding ideals of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, with the emergence of Senator Douye Diri as Governor of Bayelsa State by a miraculous sleight of hand.

Miebi Bribena stands upon his chosen pulpit every Sunday morning to dispense the scriptures from the Holy Bible, with particular respect to the injunctions of Jesus Christ. He speaks with authority about the significance of the cross and the sacrifice of the lamb of God upon Calvary Hill.

He speaks about the most important command given by Adonai. Love thy neighbour as thy self. He maintains, in his sermon, that it is important to do good because Rabbi came along doing good all the time. Bribena has been in charge of the Christ Embassy Church in Yenagoa, Kaiama, and Odi. He was equally delegated to open branches of the church in Accra and Kumasi, Ghana, and continues to oversee the growth of all the branches under him.

Pastor Miebi Bribena turned fifty one on March 25, 2021 and had cause to celebrate God’s goodness in his life. It was also fit occasion to assemble all the laurels gathered over the years, and to stand still while his long prolife was being recounted in fresh colours on a wide screen. The testimonies were many for a man who was born in the humble homestead of Agbere half a century ago, now holding aloft a plaque as a United Nations Peace Ambassador, the first from Bayelsa to hold such an honour.

Born in Agbere, Sagbama local government area of Bayelsa State on Wednesday March 25, 1970, Onyimiebi Bribena still names his primary address as Tuburukunu Quarters, Agbere Town.

In his spare time, Miebi Bribena takes delight in playing chess, singing good old tunes, dancing to his heart’s content, and reaching out to new friends, always ready to preach the word of God and speak of the stability it offers. He lives with the assurance that not even corona virus can threaten his source of income or his sense of well-being.

Miebi is proud of his professional qualifications. In 2011, he became a member of the Architects Registration Council of Nigerian, Arcon, and later that same year an affiliate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Ariba. In 2018, for his spirited efforts to improve the livelihood of the lowly in society, and his ability to spread the message of peace and harmony in a world of strife, he received recognition as an Ambassador of Peace with an award from the United Nations Positive Livelihood Award Centre.

MARRIAGE

As Christians all over the world celebrates the Easter period. As the season shown love to each other for the everlasting sacrifice the Lord Jesus shown to mankind, the president and the chief Executive officer of Baraza Multi- Purpose Cooperative society and the senior Pastor of Christ Embassy Arc. Miebi Bribena and his lovely wife celebrates their 24th marriage.

Mr. and Mrs. Arc. Miebi Bribena the 5th day of April is a day that brings forth sweet recollections of promises made and promises kept; the beginning of a journey that started 24 years ago and still going strong.

The couple tied the nuptial knot on April 5, 1997 and through the vicissitudes of life have held fast to each other for solace and comfort, growing both their home, Businesses and ministry and acting as shining example, that celebrity status can go hand in hand with marital bliss.

Dynamic leader Arc. Pastor Miebi Bribena recently celebrated his birthday and just returned to the country after an enjoyable birthday with his family and friends. He returned just in time for the couple to celebrate their 24th anniversary together in an atmosphere of sweet reminiscences involving their three beautiful children.