Kola Abiola, the eldest son of Late Chief MKO Abiola, has finally spoken on his alleged marriage to Aisha Babangida, the eldest daughter of Nigeria’s former Military President Gen. Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB).
IBB and MKO Abiola were friends until the latter contested and won the June 12, 1993, presidential election, but the former would later cancel the election.
Their relationship went sour, but before the annulment, Kola and Aisha were allegedly dating.
At a time, it was speculated that they secretly got married. Rumour-mongers said the marriage failed after IBB annulled the election of MKO Abiola, which the late business mogul convincingly won under the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
In an interview, Kola said they never got married. According to him, they’ve been friends before politics.
“We never got married. I had known her way before politics and, if I wanted to, I would have married her long before the election, but it would not have made any sense because it would have looked like an arranged thing,” he told The Sun.
According to Press Reader, politics drove a wedge between the two families as a result of the fallout of the 1993 presidential poll and the love-birds had to search for love in other places.
When he was asked about the number of children his later father has, he simply said: “You can’t count the number of children one has.”
Kola, who loves a low-key life pointed out that there was a lot of uniqueness in MKO, saying nothing was a mistake to his late father.
He said he’s proud of his father: “It may look like an excessive thing but, over the years, it turned out well. I have a sister married to a someone from the Niger Delta”.
“I am married to a Deltan. I have a sister married to the Ijebu. I have a brother married to an American.
“I have a brother married to the Kanuri. I have a brother married to someone from Zimbabwe and, before you know it, we would be presidents all over the world. We don’t joke around,” he boasted.
#Aisha and Kola marriage life after parting ways
Kola got married in 1992 to Victoria Arafat Ossom and took another wife Olayinka, who according to PM News died on October 16, 2010.
According to privateproperty.com, Kola’s net worth has never been successfully estimated given his extremely private life and business dealings.
Aisha, on the other hand, found love in 2003 when she got married to Basheer Nalebo Garba, a relative of Nigeria’s late military dictator Sani Abacha.
The marriage reportedly collapsed within three years “due to the accusation of intolerance and arrogance majorly on the part of Aisha,” says Press Reader.
A few years later Aisha got married to the former governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Aliyu Shinkafi, as the third wife.