“I No Longer Identify As Nigerian” — Kemi Badenoch Finally Denounces Nigerian Citizenship
The Tory leader, who was raised in Lagos and has Yoruba roots, mentioned that she has not held a Nigerian passport for about twenty years. Badenoch explained that although she knows the country “very well” and maintains an interest in its affairs, she believes her “home is where my now family is”.
Kemi
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.”
She continued: “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.”
Following the death of her father, Femi Adegoke, a doctor, in 2022, Badenoch said she had to obtain a visa to travel to Nigeria, describing the process as a “big fandango”.
She was born in a private hospital in Wimbledon, South West London, in 1980 before her parents took her to Nigeria. She was among the last to benefit from Britain’s birthright citizenship rule, which was abolished by Margaret Thatcher the following year.
Badenoch recalled feeling both British and Nigerian during her upbringing in Lagos. She said: “Finding out that I did have that British citizenship was a marvel to so many of my contemporaries, so many of my peers.”
She added that the reason she returned to the UK was a difficult one, saying it was because her parents believed “there is no future for you in this country”.
She also remembered “never quite feeling that I belonged there” while in Nigeria.
Badenoch has faced criticism from Lagos politicians over remarks she has made about Nigeria. She has often referenced her experiences in a country affected by corruption, military rule, and described Lagos as a place where “fear was everywhere”.
In December, Nigeria’s vice-president remarked that Badenoch “has every right to remove the Kemi from her name” if she was not “proud” of her Nigerian roots.
A spokesperson for Badenoch later clarified that she “stands by what she says” and that she is “not the PR for Nigeria”.
Arriving in the UK at age 16 to study, Badenoch shared on the podcast that she did not face racial discrimination in Britain “in any meaningful form”.
She said: “I knew I was going to a place where I would look different to everybody, and I didn’t think that that was odd. What I found actually quite interesting was that people didn’t treat me differently, and it’s why I’m so quick to defend the UK whenever there are accusations of racism. I did not experience prejudice in any meaningful form. That doesn’t mean prejudice doesn’t exist, that it doesn’t happen, many people do. But I didn’t, not seriously.”
She described the parliamentary group as an “extended family with lots of drama”.
She added: “I do see the Conservative Party as family, so much of what we do goes beyond party policy. It’s instinct, we recognise each other, we have the same sort of squabbles, and it’s why when people ask me about plots I just think, ‘eh, this is extended family stuff’. Anybody who’s got an extended family with lots of drama will recognise that.”
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