United Kingdom Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, has revealed that she no longer identifies as Nigerian, despite her heritage and early upbringing in Lagos.
Speaking on the Rosebud podcast, the British politician of Yoruba descent disclosed that she has not held a Nigerian passport in over two decades, stating her connection to the country is now limited to ancestry and family ties.
“I’m Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there because of my parents but by identity, I’m not really,” Badenoch explained.
“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.”
Badenoch, born in London in 1980, spent much of her childhood in Nigeria and the United States before returning to the UK at age 16 for her A-levels, prompted by political and economic instability back home.
She recalled her parents telling her, “There is no future for you in this country.”
Her British citizenship, she noted, came just before Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government abolished automatic birthright citizenship in 1981.
“Finding out that I did have that British citizenship was a marvel to so many of my contemporaries,” she said.
Despite her roots, she recounted difficulties returning to Nigeria following her father Dr. Femi Adegoke’s death in 2022, saying she had to go through a “big fandango” to obtain a visa.
Now leading the Conservative Party, Badenoch described her husband, children, and her political journey as the core of her current identity.
“The Conservative Party is very much part of my family , my extended family, I call it,” she added.
Leave a Reply