A former House of Representatives Speaker Dimeji Bankole will, on Friday, January 15, tie the nuptial knot with Miss Aisha Shinkafi Saidu, daughter of Kebbi State Governor Atiku Bagudu and Hajiya Zainab Shinkafi Bagudu.
Bankole, who divorced his first wife in 2017, has, in the past few years, been a much sought after bachelor among eligible spinsters within and outside Nigeria.
Friday’s marriage ceremony will draw the curtain on speculations about his matrimonial intentions since the divorce.
The bride, a lawyer and graduate of the University of Hull in the UK, is a granddaughter of late political heavyweight and onetime head of Nigeria’s Security Organisation (NSO), Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi, the Marafan Sokoto
The bride’s mother is Shinkafi’s daughter and a sister to the former Governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Aliyu Shinkafi.
A statement from the Bankole family of Iporo, Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, said a quiet introduction between the two families held a few weeks earlier to kick off the joining together, in line with Islamic and traditional injunctions.
At the introduction ceremony, Sokoto State governor and Bankole’s successor as House of Representatives Speaker, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, led the groom’s family to the bride’s family home to seek her hand in marriage.
Friday’s event will be the culmination of a courtship that both families had kept very discrete.
Political observers say the marriage would appear to connect Nigeria’s great political divide as Bagudu is the Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Governors’ Forum while Tambuwal is the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors’ Forum.