Kemi Badenoch Says She No Longer Identifies With Nigeria

By Akinwale Kasali

Kemi Badenoch, Leader of British Conservative Party, has said she no longer wants to be identified as a Nigerian.

The Tory leader said she does not hold a Nigerian Passport since she has not renewed it in the past 20 years, and has no need to do so.

Badenoch said that while she knew the country “very well” and had an interest in what happens there, she felt that her home is where her family is.

She made this assertions while speaking on the Rosebud podcast.

She said: “I have not renewed my Nigerian passport, I think, not since the early 2000s.

“I don’t identify with it any more. Most of my life has been in the UK and I’ve just never felt the need to.

“I’m Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there, because of my parents, but by identity, I’m not really.

“I know the country very well.  I have a lot of family there, and I’m very interested in what happens there.

“But home is where my now family is, and my now family is my Children, it’s my husband and my brother and his Children, In-Laws.

“The Conservative Party is very much part of my family, my extended family, I call it.”

She however recalled when her father, Femi Adegoke, who was a Doctor, died in 2022,  Badenoch said she had to get a Visa to travel back to Nigeria, which she described as a “big fandango”.

Kemi was born in Wimbledon, South West London, in 1980 before her parents took her home to Nigeria.

She was one of the last people to receive Birthright Citizenship rules in Britain, before they were abolished by Margaret Thatcher the following year.

Kemi stated that she felt both British and Nigerian while growing up in Lagos.

“Finding out that I did have that British Citizenship was a marvel to so many of my contemporaries, so many of my peers.

“I think the reason that I came back here was actually a very sad one, and it was that my parents thought there is no future for you in this country.

“I never felt I belonged there”, she said.

Speaking further,  she remembered “never quite feeling that I belonged there” in Nigeria.

It would be recalled that the UK Conservative Party Leader has been slammed on several occasions for her statements that demean Nigeria as a country.

Kashim Shettima, Vice President of Nigeria had slammed her for being more British than Nigeria.

Shettima told her that she has every right to remove the Kemi from her name” if she was not “proud” to be from Nigeria.

Responding to Shettima’a outburst, Kemi’s Spokesman later said that the Tory leader “stands by what she says” and that she is “not the PRO for Nigeria.”

Also, the Chairman of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, NIDCOM,  Abike Dabiri-Erewa, recently lashed Kemi Badenoch for allegedly spewing lies against Nigeria, and told her that no one was forcing her to love Nigeria.