The very ambitious but miseducated Kemi Badenoch, leader of the UK Conservative (Tory) Party is in the news. It is indeed a fitting moment to make an intervention that will clear the hoopla and set many a mind straight, based strictly on facts and history.
Kemi has been in the business of slagging off Nigeria ever since she started to gain some traction in British politics. She has almost always used Nigeria as a crutch to lift herself up, constantly disrespecting her former country, never to offer the country ideas or indeed any respite or reprieve. As she spoke her way into the Tory leadership position over the years, it was by regaling her audience with how decadent, unsafe, poverty-stricken, filthy, and directionless that Nigeria is, reminding them and herself that that was why she ran out of the country. She often contradicts herself when she reveals that she lived an upper-class life in Nigeria, attending posh schools and whatnot, but like the usual desperate Nigerian émigré who cooks up stories about sexual harassment, gay prosecution, Boko Haram harassment, female genital mutilation, and other stories that she knows will catch the fancy of her asylum assessors abroad, Kemi constantly goes to town with phantom stories about hearing screams from neighbours being robbed and how lizards come out of water taps. And she’s not letting up. They say bullshit can take you to the top, but it hardly keeps you there. Kemi has come to the end of her tethers.
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She even recently upped the ante when she made this very asinine claim that northern Nigeria is a terrorist haven for Boko Haram and how she doesn’t want anything to do with Nigeria, as she sees herself only as a Yoruba person. Her right, no doubt, if she would rather open an embassy for Sunday Igboho and his Yoruba Nation. But imagine a whole Conservatives leader, rather than being the chief diplomat for her political party, is a divider of another country and in open support of insurgency? Imagine a leading political figure and potential Prime Minister or President of another country making such a statement when the Irish civil war raged in Britain? Imagine a white British leader of opposition, potential PM, or perhaps a sitting Prime Minister yakking on about how she is Welch or English or Scottish or Irish, to the exclusion of other ‘tribes’ that make up the union? This will be an unforgivable sin. And as I’ve heard some British pundits say on TV, Kemi has shown already that she is unworthy of the position she holds.
It took our Vice President Kashim Shettima to comment on Kemi’s constant denigration and blackmailing of Nigeria to blow this open. The VP was just playing his normal salesman role for Nigeria. When even adults and old people who should have attained that level of wisdom have refused to and would rather speak as uninformed, unexposed, inexperienced youths with all the delusions intact, Shettima has taken on the role of salesman for Nigeria, just like our principal, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He said he is proud of Kemi’s achievement, but the denigration is too much, and that if Kemi wishes, she should drop her Nigerian name and take on something that would really rid her of her African-ness; and her Nigerian-ness. I would suggest she takes on ‘Karen.’ Those who know, know why this is fitting. For Kemi breathes, eats, and sleeps anti-immigration. She has been known to counter any mention of the oppression that came with colonialism. She believes Britain is the best patch of earth in the world and they should not allow immigrants in at all. And she thinks every Muslim is a terrorist – an open display of hatred for a religion. I watched her deliver unkind cuts to PM Kier Starmer just days ago and everybody cringed as she went on almost accusing him of being a terrorist himself.
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Now, Kemi must take it easy. Her statements betray the mindset of a miseducated, perhaps half-educated person. An immature character that remains constantly pointing fingers and getting angry for no justifiable reason. A privileged child that does not acknowledge her privilege and use it to bless others. An overambitious woman that is ready to sell any and everything else – including her parent’s nation – to achieve her aims and not stop there, but continue to use that same country as her foot-mat and ass-wipe. Just as she is entitled to her opinions, and as her aide wrote, she is not a PR person for Nigeria, we too have a right to speak up in our own defence, to explain our struggles and what we are doing to make things right, and to refused to be used by anybody to massage what must be their deep-rooted inferiority complex. Nigeria is certainly not a perfect country. Nigeria has surely made mistakes in the past and there are things that it could do better presently. But in 64 years, we are certainly far from how we were in 1960 when we gained self-rule. We have evolved, and we are presently at an epoch where we could actually turn the corner.
History Lessons for Kemi
Having watched quite a number of her videos – including one from 16 years ago when she did a Ted Talk in London (TedXEuston), at a time when she still considered herself a Nigerian. I think I understand where a lot of the lady’s problems stem from. If Kemi had been born in Africa and sought citizenship in Britain, she would have at least been made to study the history of Great Britian. Even though she will have studied this to a good part – as every country puts forward its best foot – perhaps out of curiosity. But because she was born there, got transported to Nigeria, and then had to relocate to Britain at a vulnerable age (16), when as a youth many people are angry, ungrateful and entitled for no reason, and she was already a citizen without the benefit of a well-rounded history lesson, her mind became malformed.
If she had read history, she would have known that Great Britain is not the holy country she says it is. No Brit will speak as glowingly of their country as Kemi would. The British are actually masters of understatement, such that Kemi talks up that country more than the most unhinged member of the ultra-rightist BNP or some skinhead who wants all immigrants gone. Even Nigel Farage must now cringe at Kemi’s statements. If she read history, she may have discovered that after the French and Spanish became adept and sailing to far lands to pillage them, the English people only waylaid some of these folks (as pirates) to steal from the thieves at high sea. She would know the general history of those three countries when it came to plundering other nations, and later on, slavery and colonialism. And that was how those economies became big and great, as they had access to cheap labour from their trade in human beings. It is the same for the USA.
She may have also come across the history of colonialism, and how Ireland was the first country colonised by the English in the 16th Century. The brutality of that colonisation remains unforgiven and unforgotten till date. For a colonisation that started in the 16th century (circa 1560), the Irish got half independence in 1922, with the creation of the Republic of Ireland (south Ireland), while the Brits have kept hold of Northern Ireland – a nation which is in part divided along Catholic (faithful to Rome) and Anglican (faithful to England) territories and peoples. Of course, Brits and Irish people are too smart than to put this kind of dark history on the front burner, unlike folks like Kemi, who out of some certain lack of enough mental power, believe that they should use the divisions of the past to determine their country’s future, with that talk about being Yoruba or Biafra etc.
If Kemi read some history, she may have come across how George Goldie, from a family of smugglers in the Isle of Man, formed Nigeria as a business in the late 1800s, and plundered us here, as his business empire grew in England. When he could no longer cope with the incursion of the French from the north and west, and the Germans from the northeast, he sold the territory back to the royal family – relinquishing his ‘charter’. The same ‘charter’ was what the Royal Family gave to those pirates who waylaid other ships on the high seas and ‘privateered’ (stole) their goods and loots to be shared with the Royal Family. Many were killed in these sheer highway robberies. Kemi and her likes – including her usual Nigerian supporters (we know their types) – should cut Nigeria some slack.
For Kemi’s benefit, the story of Nigeria is also intriguing. After George Goldie and his Royal Niger Company (which later decomposed into UAC and Unilever, etc), the Brits took full charge as a government, hired Frederick Lugard to supervise the north and south. Several decades later, they had to give us self-governance, as a singular entity. In fairness to the British – and unlike the French who probably still don’t think Africans can self-govern – they tried to set structures in place for us. But we cannot expect them to create 2,000 countries from each ethnic group for us. The British are usually parsimonious. They don’t like spending money. And so, for them, merging north and south was not in question. There are many angles as to the push for decolonisation in the 1950s, with the first culminating around 1956 (Egypt had hers in 1922). I favour the explanation that the rash of independence for African nations, post World War II, had a lot to do with the USA wanting to decimate European colonial nations, to show who the new leader of the world is. You cannot be a legitimate world leader when some of your vassals have vast colonial territory and so many countries beholden to them.
Kemi’s Unintended Consequences
So, what were mere immature tirades that Kemi hurled at Nigeria at ease expecting no riposte has unearthed a can of worms. First is the sordid histories of Britain and Nigeria, part of which I rehashed above. Worthy of note is the fact that every country’s history is dirty, unpalatable, as every country is a creation of oppressors – whether from within or without. Even for the few countries (like South Sudan) which were created out of discourse about same cultures and languages, unity, peace and prosperity have not been assured. Then her careless rhetoric has reminded us of the history of colonialism. The Irish should take particular interest. Further, her flippant talks have reminded us about the reality of racism. Is she doing all these because she feels inferior? Would she have preferred to be a white person? Did any of us choose what to be in the raffle of life? Is there no virtue in making the best of one’s circumstances? Is every white person rich and happy? Are all blacks – all Nigerians – poor and unhappy? The question of corruption is also thrown up. Some of Kemi’s supporters have defended her position. They say she is angry at Nigerian leaders for being corrupt. Admittedly Nigeria is corrupt. But so is every other nation.
Switzerland, a country that thrives on stolen funds have always been marked squeaky clean by transparency groups. Who’s deceiving who? And Britain? There is corruption everywhere. Those who know, know. It is just unfortunate that with so many people of half-education and incurable hubris Nigeria has accepted the global toga for corruption -n even when we are not officially listed as most-corrupt country. We just love to hurt ourselves. I put our self-flagellation down to an inability to understand how to build a nation, our obtaining independence quite easily compared to nations like Kenya, Angola, South Africa, Mozambique and others, and our civil war which occurred seven years after that independence, two years after the first experiment at self-governance started to really collapse. And until we understand that development is a delicate process of self-forgiveness including self-hyping we are unlikely to get our hearts’ desires.
In defining Nigeria’s north through the prism of Boko Haram, Kemi belittles and mocks the pains of thousands of families in the hands of that terror group – which has now been thankfully decimated by Nigeria’s security forces. While they were active, Nigeria and the world found it hard to understand this group. They struck indiscriminately but had access to very sophisticated weapons and bombs. The killed thousands and maimed tens of thousands. What we can see as pattern is that their bombings and shootings were directed at very poor communities – among people who could easily escalate things to a civil war. They also killed a lot more Muslims than Christians given their areas of target. It was NOT a religious war. One is reminded of the gestapo execution type attack on Kano Central mosque in November 2014 at which over 240 people were killed. We seem to have moved on from this, but Mrs. Adegoke-Badenoch (bad enough) reminds us.
And she reminds us of the subject of terrorism, too. How did Nigeria become a terrorist nation? Who enabled Boko Haram to have access to so many weapons? Where did their weapons come from? Do they have anything to do with the killing of Gaddafi and collapse of governance in Libya? If so, what roles did the powerful countries of the world have to play in the destabilisation of Africa through Libya? Nigeria’s President Jonathan was the first African leader to sign UN Resolution 1973 with which the US/UK/France/Canada coalition declared a no-fly zone over Libya and started a full-blown war against a weak African nation. What were Nigeria’s rewards for that cooperation? What we saw next were uncontrollable terrorists. And who gained? Mrs. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State mocked Gaddafi when she laughed ‘we came, we saw.. he died!’, she shrieked! Philip Hammond, as UK Minister of Defense had admonished British businessmen to ‘pack your suitcases and head to Libya’, ostensibly to benefit from an oil sector that had been bombed open for western interests to plunder. 20,000 women and children lay dead on the streets of Libya, victims of thousands of missiles lobbed into Tripoli by the US/UK/France-led coalition. Black towns like Tawergha were totally scrubbed out by racist rebels. More than 100,000 were killed as western nations feted themselves to oil business and global media totally ignored this. This was 2011. Kemi was already in politics. Tell me about corruption and I’ll show you Libya. And Iraq. And Syria. Who’s Next?
I think we should be protective of our country even as we try to fix her. Nobody loves this country more than we who are born into it and stuck with it. We can fight ourselves all we want. But those who see themselves as outsiders with no stakes must be taken up. Our efforts to fix her economics, or her power, or whatever else, will always be suboptimized when we leave our flanks to be derided and de-marketed by usually ill-motivated people and those who wish to continue to take advantage of us. There is therefore a need to support the President and Vice President in the marketing of Nigeria. There is a need to also teach history more comprehensively, and to encourage our youths to read history wherever they can find sources. And sources are just too many on the internet these days.
Final tidbit for Kemi. Do you know that northern Nigerian states like Borno, Adamawa, Gombe, Bauchi, Kebbi, Taraba, Kwara, Kogi, Kaduna, Plateau, Benue, FCT, Nasarawa (at least 12 out of 19 states), have indigenous population of Christians ranging from 10 per cent to 90 per cent if Christians are the people you are looking for? Or that most southwest states are split in almost half between Christians and Muslims (Osun, Oyo, Lagos, Ogun)? Do you know that EVERY state in Nigeria comprise of practitioners of ALL religions? Do you know that religion is not an issue in Nigeria? And that we shall surely overcome our issues? I guess not. Please keep educating yourself. It takes nothing from your ambition.
‘Tope Fasua, an economist, author, blogger, and entrepreneur, can be reached through [email protected].
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