I no longer identify as Nigerian - Kemi Badenoch

In her latest comment about her Nigerian origin, the leader of the UK Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, says she no longer identifies as a Nigerian.

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She said this while speaking on a podcast, released on Friday, with the UK former member of parliament and television presenter, Gyles Rosebud.

Ms Badenoch said she is only Nigerian through ancestry and stopped identifying as one a long time ago.

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

Kemi Badenoch, born to Nigerian parents, became known for her unpleasant comments about her Nigerian origin after she was elected the Tory leader in 2024.

In one of her numerous remarks, she said that she is “Yoruba, not Nigerian,” at one point saying she had “nothing in common with the people from the north of the country,” referring to northern Nigerians.

She has repeatedly described her experiences in Nigeria as one plagued with corruption and dysfunction. She said she grew up seeing “what happens when politicians are in it for themselves, using public money as their private piggy banks.”

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PREMIUM TIMES earlier reported that Ms Badenoch falsely claimed she is unable to pass on her Nigerian citizenship to her children because she is a woman.

Speaking on Mr Rosebud’s podcast, the Tory leader said she has not renewed her Nigerian passport since the early 2000s because she no longer identifies with the country, while noting the country’s crisis had shaped her political outlook.

Ms Badenoch, speaking about her life and upbringing in Lagos, said, “As a child, I remember never quite feeling that I belonged there.”

She also added that she recalled “coming back to the UK in 1996 thinking: this is home.”

Ms Badenoch, who was born in the UK, grew up in both Nigeria and the US. She returned to England aged 16.

“I know the country very well, I have a lot of family there, and I’m very interested in what happens there,” she said. “But home is where my now family is.”

She also claimed the reason she returned to the UK was a “very sad one.”

“It was that my parents thought: ‘There is no future for you in this country’.”

She further noted that she had not experienced racial prejudice in the UK in any “meaningful form.”

“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,” she said.

Ms Badenoch’s comments about Nigeria are often controversial and are considered to be disparaging of the country.

Last year, the Nigerian vice president, Kasim Shettima, accused her of denigrating the country with her comments. He said she “has every right to remove the Kemi from her name if she was not proud to be from Nigeria. ”

He also compared her to another diaspora politician in the UK, saying, “Rishi Sunak, the former British prime minister, is originally from India. A very brilliant young man, he never denigrated his nation of ancestry nor poured venom on India.”