By Emmanuel Nduka
Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch is the UK’s Conservative Party leader. Born in the UK to Nigerian parents, she grew up partly in Nigeria and the US, and returned to England aged 16.
Since taking over leadership of the Conservative Party since November 2024, she has taken several digs at Nigeria and the Nigerian Government in what stakeholders have described as a deliberate agenda to demarket her heritage.
Heritage Times HT highlights a few of her remarks against Nigeria:
I No Longer Identify As Nigerian
Speaking on Friday on The Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth podcast, Badenoch abruptly severed ties with Nigerian. She stated: “I’m Nigerian through ancestry, by birth … but by identity I’m not really”. “I have not renewed my Nigerian passport, I think, not since the early 2000s … I don’t identify with it anymore, most of my life has been in the UK and I’ve just never felt the need to. I know it well. I care about what happens there. But home is where my now family is,” She went claimed.
Her latest declaration has further fueled criticism of her perceived rejection of her Nigerian heritage. “Your name is still ‘Kemi’ and you don’t want to identity as Nigerian, that’s ok. Just bring back our name. You can change to ‘Kimberly’ or Kim Kardashian,” Shehu Sani, a former Nigerian Lawmaker wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday.
Nigeria Is “Dysfunctional And Dangerous”
Badenoch often characterised her childhood in Lagos State, Nigeria’s commercial hub, as defined by poverty, corruption, violence, and fear. She recounted neighbourhood “screams of neighbours every night being attacked,” and claimed built-in dysfunction in Nigerian governance, contrasting it with her positive experience in Britain.
“I went to a secondary school. It was called a Federal Government Girls school in a place called Sagamu and that was like being in prison,” she added while she spoke on the recent podcast.
Claims That Her Gender Prevents Passing On Nigerian Citizenship To Her Kids
In a recent CNN interview, she asserted that her children could not obtain Nigerian citizenship “because I’m a woman,” calling Nigerian citizenship laws virtually impossible to navigate. This claim also sparked outrage, as Nigerian constitutional experts affirmed Nigerian mothers can pass citizenship by descent under Section 25, rendering her statement factually incorrect.
Also taking to his X page, former Presidential Adviser, Reno Omokri wrote: “To show you how empty and myopic Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the UK Conservative Party is, Ashleigh Plumptre, who was born in England, has Nigerian heritage, going back to her grandparent, Harry Dotun Plumptre. Yet, based on that relationship, she got Nigerian citizenship and a passport, despite having two British citizen parents”.
Warning That Britain Should Not Become Like Nigeria
Speaking in early 2025, Badenoch cautioned that she did “not want Britain to be like Nigeria,” implying that Nigeria is plagued by “terrible governments that destroy lives”. She recounted how her family’s wealth evaporated under hyperinflation and mismanagement, using this as a cautionary example for British governance.
But her constant jabs at Nigeria has not also gone down well with UK citizens as well. “Yet your mum came in from Nigeria to ‘check in’ to a a hospital in 1980 so you could have British citizenship, then ‘checked out’ and went home straight after you were born. A loophole your heroine Margaret Thatcher closed. The mismatch between your life & your belief is INSANE,” a British Author, Dr. Louis Raw wrote on X recently.
“You’re Nigerian. Britain is not your home. Britain is the home of the Anglo-Celts. The Tories along with Labour have played a major role in demographically replacing the indigenous population with cheap foreign workers for the sake of filling labour vacancies just to see 0.1% of GDP growth. Reimigration now,” @ricdie, another Briton wrote on X.
“I Identify Solely As Yoruba”… And “Distance Myself From Northern Nigeria”
In another fierce dig at Nigeria, she explicitly said: “I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity [Yoruba]… I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where the Islamism is … those were our ethnic enemies”. This was widely interpreted as ethnic bigotry and was deeply inflammatory. “Being Yoruba is my true identity … I have nothing in common with the people from the north … those were our ethnic enemies”.
Recounting Her ‘Negative’ Experiences With The Nigeria Police Force
Reflecting on her upbringing, she claimed the Nigerian police “stole my brother’s shoe and his watch” and suggested they routinely rob citizens, labeling Nigeria as “a very poor country” where “people do all sorts of things”. By contrast, she praised British policing.
Opposition candidate in Nigeria’s last election and former governor, Peter Obi in his reaction to Badenoch’s unending banters, questioned: “What should we make of all the negative remarks about Nigeria?”
“Instead, we should use these criticisms as a catalyst to prioritize critical areas of development and improve the lives of our people,” he suggested.
