Kemi Badenoch’s bid for British Prime Minister after Boris Johnson has grabbed media excitement — and rightly so.
A woman of Nigerian descent, married to Hamish Badenoch of Irish descent, both of them London-born, with three kids strutting a bi-racial heritage, with all its complications and exciting challenges, is bound to trigger wild excitement.
But flip it the other way: it could also throw up Britain’s historical burdens, given the country’s not-so-palatable adventures in the past.
Kemi might show off her Irish name now. But even that triggers memories of brutal English crimes against her husband’s Irish homeland. Remember, W.B. Yeats’s “Easter 1919” poem, a dirge on British brutality against the Irish Easter uprising against British iron rule?
Her own Yoruba roots are no better testimonials, given the mess British colonialism made of cultures and civilizations roughly cobbled together by British greed, in what has become today’s Nigeria.
Which makes it all the more surprising that Kemi would throw the country of her descent under the bus, in her ardour for British PM.
“I grew up in Nigeria and I saw firsthand when politicians are in it for themselves,” she told the British press, “when they use public money as their piggybanks, when they promise the earth and they pollute not just the earth, but the whole political atmosphere with their failure to serve others.”
Unfortunately, this is some galling truth — particularly high public sector corruption, where Nigeria in truth has a stiff challenge! But if that were such a Nigerian monopoly, Mrs Badenoch wouldn’t be pushing for Boris Johnson’s position right now — would she? — after Bo-Jo’s brilliant rout of others at the last British general election.
Besides, should Kemi’s Yoruba roots not have taught her that Yoruba quip that says whatever the wise mumble in uneasy secrecy, only the fool recklessly blubbers?
Even if Nigeria has challenges, must it be mouthed by a person of Nigerian descent, and for the sake of grabbing Brit power? Is that not crass opportunism of an executive house negro, bawling and screaming and screeching to belong?
If any of the four minority ethnics triumphs to succeed Boris Johnson, Britain would only come under the rule of the offspring of those whose forebears it had trampled upon in the past — good riddance!
Still, the stiff upper lip masters of laconic and sardonic humour would just hum, to themselves, the immortal tune of Reggae great, Jamaican Jimmy Cliff: “Poor slave, they take the shackles off your body … Poor slave, they put the chains on your mind …”
Let Kemi push for British PM. But let her leave Nigeria out of it. Let her deal with British challenges. Nigeria is dealing with hers.