Gbenga Adeosun
There has been a recent furore in the polity; set in motion by Vice President Kashim Shettima’s remarks concerning certain comments he deemed unsavoury, made a few years back by Kemi Badenoch, the current leader of the Conservative Party (also called Tory) in the United Kingdom.
It is not uncommon to see persons in global political positions occasionally make certain unpalatable remarks about the political, economic, or social conditions in other countries; for instance, former British Prime Minister David Cameron once referred to Nigeria and Afghanistan as “fantastically corrupt” countries when their leaders attended an anti-corruption summit in the UK in 2016, a position that got the concurrence of then President Buhari who rode to power on the back of a cardinal promise to eliminate the endemic corruption synonymous with the management of the country’s resources. Similarly, US President Donald Trump has been said to refer to some African Countries as “Shitholes” and once described his meeting with some African leaders as insipid, reportedly calling some of them “the most lifeless people he has ever met.” But for derogatory comments to come publicly from someone who shares a common heritage with the country derided primarily because the individual is now privileged to hold a key leadership position in a major global power calls for a closer look.
Born to Nigerian parents as Olukemi Adegoke, Kemi spent her childhood living in Lagos, Nigeria, and the USA where her mother lectured. She has spoken about having a “very tough upbringing” in Nigeria. Her family lived in the middle-class neighbourhood of Surulere and she was a student at the private International School of Lagos. Badenoch has described her background as “middle-class” but said in 2018 “Being middle class in Nigeria still meant having no running water or electricity, sometimes taking your chair to school” and claimed that her family went through “periods of poverty” due to inflation. She returned to the UK at the age of 16 to live with a friend of her mother’s owing to the deteriorating political and economic situation in Nigeria, which had affected her family. During her parliamentary maiden speech, Badenoch stated that she was “to all intents and purposes a first-generation immigrant”.
Her foray into politics saw her join the Conservative Party in 2005 at the age of 25.
At the 2010 general election, she contested the Dulwich and West Norwood constituency and came third. In 2012, Badenoch unsuccessfully contested a seat in the London Assembly but became a member of the London Assembly after Victoria Borwick was elected as an MP in 2015. A supporter of Brexit in the 2016 referendum, Badenoch was elected to the House of Commons at the 2017 general election. She held various cabinet positions under the premiership of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak, and when the Tories lost the last elections in 2024, Sunak was replaced by Kemi who currently serves as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Conservative Party making her the first Black person to hold those offices.
In July 2022, after the undignified exit of Boris Johnson as Tory leader and British Prime Minister, there was an internal jostling for the top spot among prominent members of parliament under the Conservatives who were the ruling party. Kemi Badenoch was among those gunning for this position and in the course of making her case as to why she was the best fit for the seat, she made certain remarks regarding her country of birth.
Kemi berated her home country’s politicians for being selfish and failing to serve others. In her speech to garner support for the top office, she said she was in the contest to serve her party and country, the United Kingdom, having grown up in Nigeria and witnessed how Nigerian politicians failed to serve the country. She said inter alia “I’m ambitious for our party and our country. I chose to become a conservative MP to serve and I chose this country because here, I can be free and I can be everything that I wanted to be. I grew up in Nigeria and I saw firsthand when politicians are in it for themselves. When they use private money as their piggy banks, when they promise the earth they pollute not just the earth, but the whole political atmosphere with their failure to serve others. I saw what socialism means for millions: poverty and broken dreams. I came to Britain, determined to make my way in a country where hard work and honesty can take you anywhere. She vividly described Nigeria as lawless, recalling hearing “neighbours scream as they are being burgled and beaten – and wondering if your home will be next.” She described her home city as “a place where almost everything seemed broken.”
Vice President Kashim Shettima criticized Kemi Badenoch, for making disparaging remarks about Nigeria at the 10th Annual Migration Dialogue at the State House in Abuja on Monday 9th December, Shettima emphasized that migrants are a vital source of life in all societies. According to Shettima “Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the British Conservative Party. We are proud of her despite her efforts at denigrating her nation of origin. She is entitled to her own opinions; she has even every right to remove the Kemi from her name, but that does not underscore the fact that the greatest black nation on earth is the nation called Nigeria. One out of every three, four black men is a Nigerian and by 2050, Nigeria will be the third most populous nation on earth.” He compared Badenoch’s approach to that of her predecessor, Rishi Sunak – the UK’s first prime minister of Indian heritage – as “a brilliant young man” who “never denigrated his nation of ancestry.”
Asked about Shettima’s comments, Badenoch’s spokesman said she “stands by what she says” and that she “is not the PR for Nigeria, she is the leader of the opposition and she is very proud of her leadership of the opposition in this country, she tells the truth. She tells it like it is. She is not going to couch her words.”
Firing another salvo at Shettima, Kemi took on a more dangerous route of bitter tribal politics when she declared that she is a Yoruba and has nothing in common with the northern part of Nigeria. According to her, Northern Nigeria is a haven for Islamism and Boko Haram. She expressed dismay at how she’s being identified as Nigerian, noting that she identifies less with the country. She said, “I find it interesting that everybody defines me as being Nigerian. 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 Islamism is. Being Yoruba is my true identity, and I refuse to be lumped with the northern people of Nigeria, who ‘were our ethnic enemies,’ all in the name of being called a Nigerian.
The sheer descent into venomous tribal politicking was at variance with Kemi’s position when she used the name “Nigeria” to seek support during her initial days in British Politics. Kemi once sought the help of people from Nigerians to secure her parliamentary seat. In 2010, she sought the support of the Nigerian community in the United Kingdom in her bid to win a seat in the British parliament. A campaign document that has been making the rounds on social media showed that during her campaign for Dulwich and West Norwood, she reached out to Nigerians while highlighting her roots. She particularly pledged to uplift the image of the country through her position in the British political system.
In a message to her Nigerian supporters, Badenoch said, “I need your help. I’m running for parliament in the 2010 UK general elections. The race is very tight. Last year, a survey was carried out in this constituency by the News of the World and the forecast was that I would win. This year, things are a lot tougher as the party has dropped nationally in the polls. I need your help. Furthermore, she said “In a recent BBC interview, a caller insulted me because I’m Yoruba. I was very disappointed that a Nigerian woman who claimed to have lived in London for 45 years had issues with me being Yoruba than with my political views and shamefully made her comments on national radio. We need to get out of this mindset where we are fighting one another and try to support each other instead.”
However, after winning the election, she has continually deployed her experiences in Nigeria as unsavoury and toxic, using it as a talking point to rally support for her policies; exploiting purported defects in her roots for populist political gains, which has underscored the duplicitous nature of her claims regardless of their veracity. Attempts at nation-building should come from a constructive point of view to positively engage key drivers of change and not just a vain attempt to dominate headlines or appeal to certain sections of the British electorate for immediate political rewards. She has gone overboard with the unguarded remark, trying to fan the embers of tribal political division in Nigeria regarding the fight against terrorism, at a time when national unity is paramount to the achievement of critical objectives. Most nations, including the United Kingdom, continue to grapple with challenges of fundamentalist ideologies and terrorism; and it is highly mischievous to sectionalize the fight. Even Southwest Nigeria which she hailed from is not immune from criminal offences with kidnappings, ritual killings, and armed robbery which continue to pose serious challenges to the zone’s internal security.
In a separate interview with The Free Press, a US media outfit, Badenoch said officers of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) stole her brother’s watch and shoe in Lagos. The British journalist asked her if she trusted the UK police. In response, she said: “I do. My experience with the Nigeria Police was very negative. Coming to the UK, my experience with the British Police was very positive.
The police in Nigeria will rob us, when people say I have this bad experience with the police because I’m black, I say well…I remember the police stole my brother’s shoe and his watch.” The interviewer exclaimed in shock. “They took his shoe and his watch?” Kemi continued: “It’s a very poor country. People do all sorts of things. So, giving people a gun is just a license to intimidate. But that’s not just the problem. That is not the bar we should use for the British Police. When I was burgled, for example, the police were there. They were helpful before they eventually caught the person. This was in 2004, which was 20 years ago.”
Snippet of this interview shared on popular microblogging platform ‘X’ by an account with username @OneJoblessBoy has garnered over 15 million views, with more than 5,000 comments and retweets by Nigerians who used the avenue to share personal tales of agony based on their encounters with men of the Nigerian Police Force with many sharing horrid stories of extortion, bribery, physical and emotional harm, brazen theft, intimidation, wrongful accusation, unjustifiable detention and infringement of basic human rights by officers of the Nigerian Police Force.
It is undeniable that there are fundamental defects in the operations and conduct of officers of the Nigeria Police Force. The cataclysmic EndSARS protests by young Nigerians in October 2020 which is perhaps the most potent social movement the nation has witnessed since the return of democracy further attests to the distraught and anguish of Nigerians with the Police Force. This has continued to be a challenge for successive governments who have launched many efforts to reform the Force for better service delivery but with minimal degree of success. But the timing, context, and circumstances surrounding Kemi’s comments this particular time were not in good faith. She is in a position of political authority and uniquely placed to share ideas and recommendations with Nigerian Leaders but she has offered no solution or idea to improve the operations of the Nigeria Police Force, only resorting to scurrilous media attacks to serve her political posturing.
However, Kemi’s comments also call for a sober reflection and deep inwards retrospection. No nation is perfect, but Nigeria, the most populous black nation in the world, endowed with diverse natural & human resources, and supposed to be the standard of good governance and development stride in Africa has been plagued for too long with repetitive leadership failures culminating in high corruption, mismanagement of the nation’s wealth by the ruling class, low standards of living, economic turmoil, widespread insecurity and absence of basic social amenities with millions of Nigerians living below $2 per day, classified as living in immiserating poverty without access to food, healthcare, education, electricity, potable water, jobs and even the middle class privileged to be in private sector or civil service employment are living from paycheck to paycheck. Smallholder businesses are collapsing by the day due to the tough macroeconomic environment and the biting cost of living crisis continues unabated while the few in political positions continue to live large in luxury with their families and acolytes.
Kemi’s comment regarding the selfish nature of Nigerian Politicians is not false, her comments pointing out the gaping holes in the operations of the Nigerian Police Force are also factual. While the comments could be solely for her political advantage; and notwithstanding the alternative reality wherein she could have communicated these issues in a more moderated manner and channeled it to relevant quarters with opportunities for corrective measures if she indeed cared for Nigeria; what is said is said; they are based in truism and when push comes to shove, the buck stops at the table of the country’s leadership.
Since Vice President Shettima has decided to excavate comments made in 2022 and bring back the discourse to mainstream media, he could as well leave Kemi Badenoch alone, and focus on the message by working with his principal, President Bola Tinubu, channeling that energy to ensure no one, either a Nigerian or non-Nigerian has the opportunity to malign Nigeria in such denigrating manner anymore by ensuring Nigeria adheres to the highest standards of governance, enshrines prudent management of public finances, tackle insecurity head-on, reposition the Military and Police Force to operate in a way that meets global best practices, alleviate corruption in government finances, provide citizens with economic security and comfort, and give all Nigerians a country they will be proud to identify with regardless of their location. This is the best rebuttal befitting the situation.
