BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE,  DEPUTY POLITICS EDITOR
CALL her the last woman standing and you will not be wrong. She is the only woman challenging President Goodluck Jonathan and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar in today’s quest for the presidential flag of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

And across the 63 political parties, she is the only woman of substance still fighting to occupy the Aso Rock seat of power.

Indeed, if zoning to marginalised sections of the polity and voting power were to be the only determinants of the 2011 presidential polls, Jubril says she would be the biggest beneficiary. According to her, women had been grossly marginalised in the power-sharing arrangement, with no woman occupying the nation’s highest office since independence in 1960.

And this is in spite of the fact that women account for about 51% of the voting population of the country. The highest office a woman has occupied is Speaker of the House of Representatives, which Hon. Patricia Etteh held for four months and 26 days between June and October 2007 before she was compelled to quit over alleged graft.

A veteran presidential aspirant of sorts and in her early 60s, Jubril’s presidential ambition dates back to 1992. She was an aspirant in the defunct Social Democratic Party, SDP in the botched Third Republic. She also aspired in 1998 on the platform of the PDP and lost the presidential ticket to Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, who went on to win the polls.

In 2003, she took her ambition to the Progressive Action Congress, PAC and became the first woman to contest a presidential election in Nigeria. She later returned to PDP, to jostle for the party’s ticket in 2007. She scored four votes at the convention which late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua won.

Jubril, who until recently chaired the Governing Council of the College of Education (Technical), Asaba, declared her presidential intention on August 26, 2010.

Jubril gained a wide range of experience as a teacher, housewife, sportswoman and counsellor. The one_time Commissioner for Social Development, Youths and Sports in Kwara State and former assistant athletics coach, Kaduna Sports Council, also taught at the Advanced Teachers College, Kano.

She attended Datford College of Education, London and Kansas University, USA, where she graduated with a B.Sc. in Education among others. In addition, she bagged a Masters Degree in Education from the University of Lagos and specialised in Educational, Social and Family Psychology.

A consultant of repute, Jubril is a social reformer and devoutly religious. She believes every aspect of life or success is rooted in ethics.

She is married with children.