On Kemi Badenoch

When the race to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the UK started, one of the dark horses was a lady of Nigerian descent, Kemi Badenoch (nee Adegoke). In appealing to her UK Tory base, Mrs Badenoch said some things that Nigerians saw as unflattering.

“I have seen what happens when politicians are running for themselves when they use public money as their private piggy banks when they promise the earth and pollute not just the air, but the whole political atmosphere with their failure to serve others.”

Is Mrs Badenoch wrong?

My column this month in Financial Nigeria tries to examine her statements, the reactions, and I end up asking something that Nigerians ought to think about (we hardly ever do) — Boris Johanson’s paternal great grandfather was Turkish. Rishi Sunak’s parents are Indian. Dominic Raab’s father was a Czechoslovak Jew. Even going back a century and a half, Benjamin Disraeli’s grandfather was an Italian Jew. Kemi Badenoch is the child of immigrants to the UK, and she had a shot at running for the highest office in the land. Now let us look at our parody of a country and ask ourselves this — can such a thing happen in Nigeria?