Sadiya Umar Farouq, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has reportedly married Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, the Chief of Air Staff, a year after she made the headlines for a rumoured wedding with President Muhammadu Buhari.
According to report, the wedding Fatiha held on Friday, September 18, 2020, at the Maitama Juma’a Mosque in Abuja as confirmed by multiple sources.
The publication added that the event was a private affair as one of the sources disclosed that “very few people were invited to attend the wedding Fatiha because (of) the couple.”
“Those close to them didn’t want to publicize the issue”, the source added.
The report added that Abubakar and Farouq have been dating for “a while” as revealed by the source.
“They have been in a relationship for a while and what happened on Friday has put to rest all the speculations about her relationship with President Muhammadu Buhari,” the source said.
In October 2019, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq was at the centre of a rumoured wedding saga with President Muhammadu Buhari. The rumour, which began and fleshed out on social media, claimed that President Buhari will be getting married to Farouq because the First Lady Aisha Buhari had been away for months.
The alleged wedding ignited conversations on social media and in the pages of some tabloids, while on Twitter the hashtags; #TheWedding, #BUSA19, #AISHA, #Presidentialwedding and several others began trending.
“Apparently, the second wife story is true. What cant be confirmed is the date of the wedding fatiha. This man shouldn’t tempt his Creator. He just recovered from serious ill health and now he wants to add another yarinya! Second Term, Second Wife! Baba o! #SecondTermSecondWife,” Former Special Assistant on Social Media to the former President Goodluck Jonathan, Reno Omokri tweeted at that time.
The rumoured wedding was further strengthened by a video which showed Aisha Buhari in an angry outburst at the Aso Villa after she returned from London. Mrs Buhari would later confirm to the BBC that the video is old and was recorded by a relative of the president who lives in Aso Rock, sometime in 2018.
Neither the president nor the minister, who was at that time in New York promoting a UN campaign against poverty, said anything about the rumoured marriage.
Femi Adesina, the Special Adviser, Media and Publicity to the president, would later debunk the rumour in a chat with Tribune.
“How will anyone expect that the President will be getting married and it will be a secret affair?” Adesina said. “Nigerians like to gist and play banters, as it is another way of relaxation for many, and they have seen the president as a personality that suits their side talks. It is bad, but that is what happens.”
Recalls that the Federal Government Batch A and B N-Power beneficiaries are yet to be paid their July Stipend ever since they were exited from the N-Power programme.
Afriupdate understands Farouq is often accused of delaying N-Power beneficiaries’ stipends unnecessarily, and she is being criticised by some of the exited Batch A and B beneficiaries for ‘ejecting them from the famed scheme without a proper plan in place’.
Numerous N-Power beneficiaries have described Minister Farouq’s portfolio (Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management) as an aberration, rechristening the Zamfara-born politician the ‘Disaster Minister’.
At the early stage of her period in office, Farouq blamed the stipends delay on the handing-over process of the N-Power to her ministry.
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