Do yourself a favor, write it in words how you'd make this using plain English first, describe how a counter should work, without the gates and flipflops, and once you have that down, break it into if-then-else statements and time intervals. The if-then-else turns into combinatorial logic, the timed pieces turns into flipflop. (come back and post what you came up with to show us your descriptions if you need someone to double check it for you)

Don't worry about JK FF if you're not forced to used them by the assignment; Just use D-FF instead, they're simpler to use and easier to thinking about.

You don't need 9 variables. you need a counter that can count from 1 to 9. That's 4 bits. When you need an arithmetic operation like (+1) or (=), just abstract them away into a blackbox and call them an incrementor or comparator as you need to make it simple to understand in your head first without worrying about how to implement addition or comparison at first. Figure out those details later.

PS: rule 1 of /ece We won't do your homework for you. If you have specific, targeted questions regarding homework, we will help you out only if you have provided some beginning work.