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Tag: Kemi Badenoch

  • Kemi badenoch and Nigerian citizenship

    Kemi badenoch and Nigerian citizenship

    By Mike Kebonkwu

    The crocodile may live in the water or river for a century but it does not become fish; it still remains what it is, a croc. A man’s citizenship inheres in his/her DNA, it is ingrained and settled at birth not by the passport one carries. You may choose to live in another hemisphere for convenience and mimic their accent; you remain who you are, defined, determined and settled by God who chose your parents and their place of birth. Your parents confer citizenship on you first, and if by any chance, you change your nationality by naturalizing under any circumstances, the genetic makeup conferred on you by your parents at birth is not extinguished. That is what determines your citizenship. 

    It is like the marital vow, “till death do us part”. You do not have to bellyache if you were not born in Buckingham Palace or as heir to the Emir of Bahrain; that is not where you were meant to be.  Your citizenship  is not an accident of migration or political attainment.  You are a Nigerian citizen if either of your parents is born in Nigeria or indigenous to a Nigeria community. 

     Section 25(1)(c)  of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria settles with magisterial finality who a Nigeria’s citizen is: “Every person born outside Nigeria either of whose parents is a citizen of Nigeria”.  Even when your Nigerian parents consciously travel to any part of the world to procure citizenship rights for you, that alone would not erase your Nigerian citizenship. You may enjoy the citizenship of that country if their citizenship law provides for such conferment but you are still a Nigerian; the passport you are holding notwithstanding.  After all, the hood does not make the monk. 

    This is probably where Kemi Badenoch belongs. You may speak with the Queen’s accent or anglicized Welsh up to your native name, that does not change who you are.  Your racial identity is not defined by the passport you carry; we have many Asians and Arabs also in the UK and other European countries and America; they are what they are; Asians or Arabs.  If you are a dark skinned and choose to throw away your African identity, you are lost, and probably suffering from inferiority complex; your height and achievement on global stage notwithstanding.  

    Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke is not English name; it belongs to the indigenous Yoruba ethnic nationality from Nigeria. She is married to Badenoch, a Briton.  She is probably suffering from broken identity disorder and cultural conflict.    You cannot meet a system that has been made, latched at it and the moment you are accepted, you try to erase your past; that is delusion of grandeur.  Rather than build bridge of access and accommodation, you are building walls like Donald Trump who also did not know his root as a son of immigrant grandparents to the America. For Donald Trump, it is understandable because he appears like a Nordic white; Kemi is dark and an African. 

    England may have received and welcomed Kemi and elevated her but she is still who she is; she may choose not to renew her Nigerian passport till eternity and mimic British accent, she remains native Yoruba by tribe and Nigeria’s citizenship.  I think she has more demanding task as the Conservative Party leader to concentrate to up the fortune of the Tories that is in steady decline rather than bicker over Nigeria identity, citizenship or lack of it in denial.  There was absolutely no need for the verbal diarrhoea or tutorial on citizenship which nobody is actually interested in; silence would have been golden.  

    The future is Africa; we are so blessed and so endowed and we need people with the right mindset to come and fix it and not  denigrate it in search of identity and acceptance. Kemi Badenoch should just come down from her high horse and stop making mockery of herself.  

    If Kemi Badenoch attended a Federal Government College in Nigeria, then she was certainly more privileged than her peers as those were some of the elites’ public schools in Nigeria. I had the privilege of attending a public boarding school, Osadenis High School Asaba in present day Delta State.  Our hostels and dormitories were not like prison; they were what they were supposed to be, a place of socializing by young adolescents in academic environment and we made the best of it. 

    Every generation and country passes through a historical age.  I did not grow up at the age of lawn mowers being used to cut the lawn, we used machete to cut grass.  That was the level of development in Nigeria up to 1990s.  It is part of our past that we should be proud of.  Kemi’s growth in British politics was no doubt by dint of hard work and resilience but denigrating her nationality of parentage is a mark of social disorientation of psychological proportion. 

    Read Also: Nigeria targets 10m tonnes of steel by 2030, 500,000 jobs — Tinubu

    Yes, there is corruption in Nigeria, yes there is insecurity, yes there is poor governance, yes there is under development, we have to fix it and not run away to another country to enjoy what other people had done. Every other country passed through that stage.  Had it occurred to Kemi Badenoch to ever probe British history, she would have discovered the other side of the people and culture that she now romanticizes as epitome of modern civilization.   

    I watched with disbelief, a Podcast where even the anchor was slightly embarrassed and miffed when Kemi likened her alma mater to a prison because they used machete to cut grass and used pit latrine instead of modern water closet (WC); that is quite uncharitable and uncouth.

     I am living in Nigeria and I have also not renewed my international passport for close to a decade. There are good things in Africa and Nigeria; incidentally, Kemi Badenoch would have been one of those success stories of the Diaspora because of her exploit in politics in the United Kingdom. This is not because she deserves it, but because people have fought to bring participation in UK’s politics to the level of acceptance of immigrants from other races and countries which Kemi is one. She is probably not distinguished and a shining example of anything before now, that is why she is not able to relate with her past; otherwise she should have been able to project the good aspect of her upbringing in her homeland without hiding the ugly side of it.  

    Kemi would have had a troubled and traumatized childhood and psychologically disoriented growing up in the boarding school in Nigeria; the best her country could offer to the children of elite at the time.  Unknown to Kemi, there are many distinguished Nigerians with multiple nationality and citizenships without running verbal diarrhoeal of their country.  Madam Kemi, it is my belief that it will pay you handsomely to concentrate in the arduous task of reclaiming the lost ground for the Tories and learn some lesson in culture.  Take a look again at the mirror, you are the mirror image it reflects, breaking the mirror will never change it.  You are cast in Nigerian citizenship; you may want to take your case to God!

    •Kebonkwu Esq, an attorney, writes from Abuja. He writes via mikekebonkwu@yahoo.com

  • Kemi Badenoch: When home becomes a punchline

    Kemi Badenoch: When home becomes a punchline

    Sir: Kemi Badenoch has made a habit (indeed, a politics) of narrating Nigeria as a failed origin story. In doing so, she weaponises personal discomfort as public evidence, turning her own biography into a cautionary tale about Blackness, Africanity, and the miracle of British deliverance. This is not merely a memory shared in passing, but a deliberate message crafted for political capital.

    Her statement about Federal Government Girls College, Sagamu is neither a private lament nor a measured critique, it is a rhetorical performance that serves to reinforce her image as a self-made product of British civilisation, someone who overcame the weight of a troubled continent and emerged as a refined voice in Westminster.

    The metaphor of Sagamu as a prison is a loaded one. Sagamu is no utopia, and Nigeria is not without its faults. The failures of public education, underfunding, overcrowding, infrastructure decay, are real and deserve honest confrontation. But Badenoch’s narrative leaves no room for complexity, for shared national struggle, for the soul of a country that has, despite adversity, produced minds of brilliance and character. She makes no distinction between personal hardship and national identity. Her school wasn’t simply inadequate; it was incarcerating. Her girlhood, not just difficult, but a sentence. Her escape, not a pursuit of opportunity, but an act of liberation. In reducing an entire educational and cultural experience to a metaphor of bondage, she does not offer reflection; she offers erasure.

    There is no room in her narrative for shared resilience. No acknowledgement of the many girls who passed through those same school gates and emerged with pride, dignity, and a sense of rootedness. No recognition of the teachers who, against all odds, continued to teach; of the girls who studied under flickering bulbs and still passed their WAEC exams; of the laughter that echoed through the halls despite infrastructural decay. Her version of Nigeria has no nuance. It exists only as a backdrop for her deliverance.

    Read Also: Babangida launches local security production facility Vinicius International in Nigeria

    This is not to invalidate her experience. Pain is subjective, and she is entitled to hers. But once that experience is used not for introspection, but for political gain, once it is broadcast as representative of a nation, it must be held to account. To elevate oneself by diminishing one’s country of origin is not ambition; it is performance. And performance, particularly in politics, is rarely innocent.

    Badenoch has every right to critique her past. But to turn that critique into a weapon against her heritage, to narrate her girlhood as pathology, to erase the dignity of others who endured similar conditions, this is not truth. It is branding. And branding, unlike truth, does not ask for accountability. It asks only for visibility, and applause.

    In trying to escape Sagamu, Badenoch may find she has not entered freedom, but merely another kind of captivity – one where she must keep telling the same story, in the same bleak tones, to remain acceptable. The problem with disavowing your roots for the comfort of empire is that the empire will demand fresh proof, again and again, that you have not grown them back.

    This is the textbook case of Stockholm syndrome. You fall in love with your captors because you mistake survival for affection. You bow at the empire’s gate because it taught you to see home as shameful. You sip tea at a table that once whipped your ancestors and still say thank you. You romanticise the whip as a wand.

    Kemi Badenoch, like Eniola Aluko, the former Chelsea player ingloriously dropped from England’s squad, has turned her success into a dagger aimed at her own heritage. Both parade the privileges of immigration while spitting on the soil that once nurtured them. In contrast, Rishi Sunak and Humza Yousaf wear the crown of Britishness with pride, not as an erasure of origin but as an embrace of it, uplifting their communities rather than distancing themselves from them.

    Badenoch and Aluko’s glitter may dazzle abroad, but at home, they stand as stark reminders of a diaspora torn between loyalty and survival. Their words do not merely echo across continents—they fracture the very identity that made their ascent possible.

    •Folorunso Fatai Adisa, United Kingdom

  • Time to tame this malicious Badenoch

    Time to tame this malicious Badenoch

    “I attended a Federal Government College in a place called Sagamu in Nigeria. It was like a prison. It was like ‘Lord of the Flies’ where the students were in control of everything and we operated a socialist system. There were thirty of us in one room. They made us cut grass with cutlasses because nobody else would do it. We also washed toilets without any water. I won’t say much about that aspect but it was grotty”- Kemi Badenoch, Leader of the British Conservative Party, 1st August 2025. 

    Barely two weeks after peddling the specious lie and reckless falsehood that her children were denied Nigerian citizenship because, according to her, our nation does not grant citizenship to the children of Nigerian mothers and foreign fathers, Kemi Badenough has once again dropped a foul and mendacious clanger about Nigeria. 

    This time she spoke about her supposed experiences at a Nigerian school and thereby confirmed the fact that she is an affliction and a plague. 

    Honestly if this creature were to tell me that it was day outside I would have to assume that it was night. She is simply incapable of telling the truth. 

    Lying, character assasination and slander comes naturally to her: it is deeply embedded in her genes, her pysche, her spirit and her soul. 

    Like satan, she was a liar and a murderer from the start and she knows nothing but lies. 

    This strange woman is indeed the proverbial liar from the pit of hell. 

    She is the darkness that seeks the darkness: the serpent that is devoid of truth and that seeks to do nothing but spread its poisonous and deadly venom and to steal, kill and destroy. 

    Read Also: UK-trained lawyer slams Kemi Badenoch over comments on Nigerian citizenship laws

    In addition to her perfidious disposition, she has publicly stated that she no longer ‘identifies with Nigeria’ and consequently she should have her Nigerian passport revoked, she should formally be declared ‘persona non grata’ and she should be banned from ever setting her foot in our shores again. 

    Her obsession with not just demarketing but actually destroying Nigeria and decimating the image of the Nigerian people borders on the pathological, and at this point, I am constrained to question her sanity.

    She has done much damage to our nation and it is time for us to stop treating her with kid gloves, fight back, expose her for the lying, mendacious, villanous and vile creature that she is and put her in her place. 

    It is most inappropriate to continue to take her lightly and ignore her constant attacks and misrepresentation of our people because, by her actions and words, she has wilfully and systematically held herself out as the primary and principal enemy of Nigeria and will take every opportunity to destroy our aspirations and fortunes. 

    We cannot continue to fold our arms and watch her denigrate and destroy us. 

    It is time to bring out the big guns, vigorously and aggressively challenge her malevolent fabrications and malicious mendacities and expose her for what she is: a sick and racially conflicted young lady who hates the colour of her own skin, who suffers from low self-esteem, who despises her ancestors and her parents heritage and who is in great need of psychiatric evaluation and medical attention.

    As Paul the Apostle said of Alexander the Coppersmith in 2 Timothy 4:14, she “has done us much harm, may the Lord repay her according to her works” and as he said of another in 1 Corinthians 5 we hereby “hand her body over to satan that her soul may be preserved”. 

    • (Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, Sadaukin Shinkafi)
  • UK-trained lawyer slams Kemi Badenoch over comments on Nigerian citizenship laws

    UK-trained lawyer slams Kemi Badenoch over comments on Nigerian citizenship laws

    A United Kingdom-trained legal practitioner and human rights advocate, Chief Niyi Aborisade, has faulted British Conservative politician Kemi Badenoch over her recent comments on Nigeria’s citizenship laws, describing her statements as misleading and damaging to Nigeria’s image.

    In a statement titled “Kemi Badenoch Lies and Obsession with Nigeria” released in Ibadan, Aborisade said Badenoch’s claim that she could not obtain Nigerian citizenship for her children due to her gender was “completely false” and contradicted the Nigerian constitution.

    Aborisade, a 2027 Oyo State governorship hopeful under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), argued that Section 25 of the 1999 Constitution clearly grants citizenship by descent to any person born outside Nigeria, provided at least one parent is Nigerian.

    Read Also: Nigerian citizenship: Fed Govt knocks Kemi Badenoch

    He expressed disappointment that Badenoch, despite her legal background, made such claims, suggesting either a lack of research or a deliberate attempt to distort facts for political reasons.

    The lawyer also recalled Badenoch’s early political rise in the UK, stating that she once leaned on her Nigerian heritage to gain support from the Nigerian community but has now distanced herself from those same roots.

    Aborisade accused her of inconsistency and of undermining the very community that once supported her. 

    He also criticised her position on immigration, saying her stance contradicts the opportunities she once benefited from.

    Referencing recent comments by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer describing Badenoch as “desperate for relevance,” Aborisade said the label reflects her current political posture.

    He concluded by urging Badenoch to use her platform to support, not alienate, her Nigerian heritage and community.

  • Kemi and the Iroko ‘curse’

    Kemi and the Iroko ‘curse’

    How do you pronounce that Scottish name, Badenoch?  Baid-nok as the Brits would? Or Ba-de-nok as Africans, particularly the Yoruba?

    That’s Kemi Badenoch’s first “curse of the Iroko”!  The Iroko tree, in Yoruba tradition, doesn’t rush to crush deviants. Running down her homeland will earn her sure ruin!

    Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke (Nigerian) became the proud — haughty, even — Mrs Kemi Badenock (British). 

    But as she stamps Nigeria under her British conceit, Ba-de-nock, the Scottish insurance that gifts her such insufferable hauteur, rings true of her Nigerian roots! 

    Still, she ought to have taken a cue from her beloved, immensely British husband, Hamish Alexander Badenoch.  Badenoch!  A living proof of Britain’s ancestral horrors!

    Hamish was born in Wimbledon, England — like Oyinbokemi (as Sam Omatseye dubbed her).  But were Britain a settler country like the United States, he would be English — and perhaps he regards himself as one.  But her mum was Irish.  Badenoch, his father’s name, is ancestrally Scottish — from the Gaelic original: “baideanach”.

    Now, you don’t need to be an expert in British history to know the Scots and the Irish bore the brunt of English ancient savagery, just to subdue the British Isles. 

    The Scot, fiercest rivals of the English, gave as much as they got.  Yet, got yoked into some — uneasy(?) — cohabitation.  The Irish were much more clobbered.  Yet, remain the fiercest in proclaiming their Irish-ness. 

    If the United Kingdom — of Great Britain and Northern Ireland — ever hangs on a thread, it might well be because Northern Ireland is split between unionists/loyalists (pro-UK) and nationalists/republicans (pro-United Ireland). 

    But either as Ulster unionists or Irish nationalists, Irish nationalism bubbles, perhaps with a tad more fizz, than Gaelic nationalism, which is not exactly a baby’s moan. Still, the Scot-Irish common peeve is clear disdain for English domination.

    Mr. Badenock, who in his psyche packs that latent volcano of ugly British history, has worked all over Africa — Malawi, Lagos-Nigeria, Kenya.  But not once did he betray any vile distemper against his homeland, even with his joint ancestors so cruelly mangled by the English.

    His Nigerian wife is the diametric opposite, though it’s not quite clear what’s biting her. In her serial misadventure, she has trashed her native Yoruba tact, with her adopted British diplomacy — all to thrash herself, in her arch-delusion of thrashing Nigeria.

    Indeed, for Mrs. Badenoch, it has been a grotesque double whammy: scorned in her native Nigeria; shunned by the introspective class among the Brits: the very people she labours hard to ingratiate herself.  Enter, a loathe-worthy dud of both cultures!

    If you doubt, recall British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s brutal put down, bang in the House of Commons, of poor Mrs. Badenoch, more-Brit-than-the-British, the supposed Tory Leader: 

    “She has appointed herself, I think, saviour of the western civilization, in a desperate search for relevance”!  Sardonic humour: biting, classic, British!

    Didn’t even know which bit more: the guffaw of contempt that swallowed the chamber or the Brit Oyinbokemi, her smile frozen into a grimace, looking like trapped game!

    Yet, it was all so logical: if Kemi so passionately scorns her skin (Nigerian nativity), how can she possibly adore the mere sheen over it (her plastic Britishness)?  Indeed, how?

    Since Mrs. Badenoch started her anti-Nigeria misadventure, all she has reaped is a relay of what her Yoruba folks back at home call “a-si-so” (doomed to mis-jiving); and “a-si-se” (fated to misbehaving).

    Yet, the goodly Kashim Shettima, Vice President of the Federal Republic, had tried to steer Mrs. Badenoch off her self-destruct ways: stop denigrating Nigeria or risk being soon a self-chiselled nobody, even in the British political sphere.

    But Shettima, a man of style, tact and wit, didn’t sound so stark, in his two-way advice. One: why doesn’t  Kemi be like Rishi Sunak, the Hindu-Indian ex-UK PM and Tory Leader — a “brilliant young man” who “never denigrated his nation of ancestry”, even if he hugged his Britishness no less?

    But if that was beyond the vainglorious British-Nigerian, why not a clean break: remove Kemi from her name, and fully live the cultural jetsam she had made of herself!

    Cultural jetsam?  Yes, because Nigeria, as the proverbial Oyingbo market, is so packed it misses the absence of no one!  Nigeria would move on to her manifest destiny, with or without the self-loathing Oyinbokemi!

    But that rebuke only stung her into further recklessness.  It’s true as the Yoruba say: the doomed dog is deaf to the hunter’s whistle!

    First, an alter ego declared she’s no PR spinner for Nigeria — true.  Then, “with her chest” — as they say in that pidgin lingo — she growled that Nigeria was a bastion of crooked politicians and criminal police, that robbed her brother of valuables.

    But that verbal diarrhoea would gift us what drove her Nigeria hate — Fulani hate! Her Yoruba people, she claimed, had little in common with the stony savages of the North!

    Now, what was that? The “British” hyper-educated version of the stark “Yoruba Nesan” campaign? 

    But as the “Yoruba Nesan” campaign sadly showed, cultural condescension is no sole bastion of the plebs!  Plebeians, patricians and in-between were well captured!

    Read Also: University Don urges reforms in Nigerian church to reclaim moral leadership

    That Freudian slip was clear, from Kemi Badenoch’s riposte to VP Shettima.

    Still, the good thing is that the Yoruba dodged the IPOB Igbo bullet — that wild tail wagging the dog, and pushing the collective into avoidable catastrophe — just because Nigeria had a “Fulani” president, and you must choke his tenure with blind hate: the same toxin you accuse the Fulani of!

    But even for Britisher Mrs. Badenoch, that wasn’t even bad enough — every vocal pun intended!  On CNN, she must run her mouth about Nigerian citizenship, in a fit of combative ignorance!

    That CNN show of shame had own irony — and it wasn’t pretty.  Fareed Zakaria has earned global fame and awe for his well-researched, razor-sharp Global Public Square (GPS) series on CNN. 

    So, if our Oyinbokemi chose to display her arrogant ignorance, couldn’t Zakaria himself — a proud ethnic Indian but America’s ever-shining intellectual diamond — have fact-checked her, even with a prompting question?   The Nigerian Constitution of 1999 isn’t exactly a closet document!

    Still, it’s stiff  — and sweet — Karma: her perverse tantrums on Nigeria have dragged her to CNN to spew rubbish and further de-market herself! Didn’t the Bible say what you spewed ruined you, not what you gulped?

    But among the Yoruba, it’s even more foreboding: the concept of “eedi”!  Her ailment would seem verbal “eedi”. She won’t stop until she talks herself from promise to nothing.

    The Tories will soon realize — if they have not already — that their Nigeria chatterbox is a diplomatic liability — about time!  Who wants to lug such liability as PM — or which country, in the Black world, is more critical to UK than Nigeria?

    Conceit, hubris, blot out common sense — and our Mrs. Badenoch is living proof!

    Still, a sweet takeaway!  “Bade” is a Nigerian name, even if the “Scottish” version “noch”s!  Too bad for Oyibokemi. There’s no Nigeria escape.  Talk of the Iroko “curse”!

  • Badenoch complex

    Badenoch complex

     Leader of United Kingdom’s Conservative Party with Nigerian roots, Kemi Badenoch, has a fixation with denigrating the country of her ancestry in the manner of that ancient saying about using the left hand contemptuously to point out one’s father’s house. It is a tack she apparently relishes to prove the genuineness of her nativity transplant to her adopted country, the UK. As the first Black woman to lead a major political party in that country, she built her political career on pro-Western advocacy and hardline anti-immigration rhetoric, and running Nigeria down comes handy for her to show the premium she places on her Britishness.

    Badenoch was at it again early last week with the claim that Nigeria is so strict with citizenship right that she could not transmit the citizenship she inherited from her own parents to her children because of her gender. This, in her narrative, is unlike the UK where access to the right of citizenship by immigrants is far too liberalised, leaving that country exposed to threats and exploitation. She spoke in an interview with CNN anchor, Fareed Zakaria.

    Asked by Zakaria if she would permit a Nigerian immigrant to create a “mini-Nigeria” in the UK for cultural integration, Badenoch’s response was a swift “No.” She said: “We are allowing our tolerance to be exploited. That is not right. Nigerians would not tolerate that. That’s not something that many countries would accept. There are many people who come to our country, to the UK, who do things that would not be acceptable in their countries.” The opposition leader, who represents the far right of the right-of-the-centre Tory party, cited her children’s alleged inability to become Nigerians in pressing her point. “It’s  virtually impossible, for example, to get Nigerian citizenship. I have that citizenship by virtue of my parents, but I can’t give it to my children because I’m a woman,” she argued, adding: “Yet, loads of Nigerians come to the UK and stay for a relatively free period of time, acquire British citizenship. We need to stop being naive.”

    Born Olukemi Adegoke in the UK in 1980 to elite Yoruba (Nigerian) parents, Badenoch had her childhood and early education in Nigeria before returning to the UK at age 16. It was in 2012 she married a Scottish banker, Hamish Badenoch, whose surname she adopted and with whom she has three children. These are the children she claimed can’t have Nigerian citizenship. In her interview with Zakaria, she said she would ensure it gets “a lot harder” for immigrants to acquire British citizenship if she becomes prime minister.

    But Badenoch was dead wrong about Nigerian citizenship. Contrary to her claim, Chapter 3, Section 25(1)(c) of Nigerian 1999 Constitution (as Amended) provides that a person born outside this country is a citizen if either of their parents is Nigerian. This means that having just one Nigerian parent, regardless of gender, is sufficient for citizenship by birth; and that citizenship is automatically acquired, not needing any application for consideration or naturalisation. Not a few Nigerians, including officials of government, responded to Badenoch by pointing that fact out. Presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga, in a post on his X handle, said: “Britain should send our lost daughter, Kemi Badenoch, home for proper re-education. Section 25 of our Constitution defines who has the right to Nigerian citizenship. Kemi Badenoch lied. She owes her fatherland some apology.”

    Frontline human rights lawyer Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), described Badenoch’s claim as “a display of utter ignorance” and accused her of misinforming the British public just to score political points. “In her desperate attempt to impress the British electorate, Kemi Badenoch keeps running Nigeria down. Contrary to her misleading claim, her children are Nigerians because she is a Nigerian. Her assertion that she cannot give Nigerian citizenship to her children because she is a woman is not in consonance with Section 25(b) and (c) of the Nigerian Constitution, which provides that every person born in Nigeria after independence, either of whose parents or grandparents is a citizen of Nigeria, or any person born outside Nigeria to a Nigerian parent, is a citizen,” the lawyer stated.

    Falana also cited Section 42(2) that prohibits discrimination based on birth circumstances, gender or social status. “No citizen of Nigeria shall be subjected to any disability or deprivation merely by reason of the circumstances of his birth, gender, political opinion or class,” he stated. According to him, Badenoch’s children are dual citizens of Nigeria and the UK. “It is up to the children to renounce their Nigerian citizenship upon attainment of full age in accordance with Section 29 of the Nigerian Constitution,” he added. On Badenoch’s claim that Nigerian citizenship is “virtually impossible” to obtain, Falana cited Sections 26 and 27 of the Constitution, which outline pathways to citizenship through registration and naturalisation. He acknowledged, though, that the law harbour gender bias in regard of foreign spouses. “A woman who is married to a Nigerian man is qualified for registration as a citizen. But the same right is not accorded to a man who is married to a Nigerian woman because of the patriarchal nature of the society,” he noted.

    Many netizens also rebutted Badenoch’s claim. Among them, former Kaduna Central Senator Shehu Sani slammed her for bothering about citizenship for her children “from a country she rebuked and rejected.” Others accused her of deliberately misrepresenting Nigerian law and attempting to malign her ancestral country, just so to cultivate political appeal among British voters by appearing more British than King Charles III. A few were charitable and granted Badenoch the right to deploy every available tack in pursuing her leadership ambition in the British society. But  they echoed a long standing perception of the anti-racism community that she’s made herself a  tool in the hands of racist Britain to gaslight racism concerns by conveying racism without having to deal with the baggage of being labelled racist, since she’s a Black person to whom the rhetoric has been outsourced.

    Badenoch complex is the mindset that makes Kemi see a liability she’s itchy to dump in her Nigerian roots, in contrast to her immediate predecessor as Tory leader, Rishi Sunak, who flaunted his Indian ancestry. Remember that when Sunak became prime minister in October 2022, making history as one of the youngest at age 42 and the first person of colour on the seat, a video trended showing him performing Hindu rites allegedly before entering 10 Downing Street. Fact-checking showed, however, that the video was not taken after he became prime minister but in November 2020 when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. The candles he was lighting up were in front of No. 11 Downing Street – not No. 10 – in celebration of Diwali, an Indian festival that typically falls between mid-October and mid-November. The Diwali in 2020 was at a time Covid-19 raged, forcing most countries including Britain into a lockdown. Speaking in the video, Sunak said the lockdown had compelled him to celebrate the Diwali at Downing street instead of in India with his family, noting that it was a necessary precaution for safety.

    Read Also: Shettima departs for Addis Ababa to represent Nigeria at UN food systems summit

    And it isn’t that Badenoch’s political career is getting a boost from her fixation with denouncing her Nigerian ancestry. Neither bookmakers, the British public nor Tory members foresee her at the helm of the Conservative Party by the next general election because she has led Tories to their worst electoral rating in her eight-month-old stint as party leader. In local elections that held across England on 1st May, the party sank to fourth place against the emergence of Reform UK as the new dominant opposition. A triumphant Nigel Farage, Reform UK leader, pronounced Tory party “finished” after it suffered a rout in which Reform captured a slew of Conservative strongholds in the local election. Consequently, deep dissatisfaction with Badenoch’s captaincy is brewing, with bookies projecting the probability of her leading the party into the next general election at less than 13 percent. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Labour Party has been all too happy to lean into the narrative that Tories are in trouble, claiming at a recent session in parliament that they were “sliding into oblivion.” He added: “They are a dead party walking.”

    As for whether Badenoch looks like a prime minister in-waiting, recent opinion polling found that only 10 percent of Britons said she looked prime ministerial. Even among Conservatives, the group most favourable to her, 45 percent said Badenoch did not look fit for 10 Downing, outnumbering the 31 percent who felt she did.

    If knocking Nigeria is a coping mechanism Badenoch employs in her political woes, she is likely to get more strident going forward. Sad that shoulders she could have cried on in her frustrations would not be there because of her willful self-alienation.

    •Please join me on kayodeidowu.blogspot.be for conversation

  • Nigerian citizenship: Fed Govt knocks Kemi Badenoch

    Nigerian citizenship: Fed Govt knocks Kemi Badenoch

    The Federal Government has faulted the claim by the Leader of the British Conservative Party, Ms. Kemi Badenoch, that Nigeria law does not allow women to pass on citizenship to their children.

    Badenoch had claimed that she cannot pass on her Nigerian citizenship to her children because she is a woman.

    In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday, Ms. Badenoch said while many Nigerians are taking advantage of the UK’s relatively easy citizenship acquisition process, it remains “virtually impossible to get Nigerian citizenship. I had that citizenship by virtue of my parents; I can’t give it to my children because I’m a woman”, she said.

    Reacting to the claim, the spokesperson of the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, told The Nation that Badenoch’s claim was disturbing because it lacks veracity.

    “This is a false and very disturbing narrative because Section 25 of the Nigerian Constitution allows citizenship by descent to children born abroad, if either parent is a Nigerian citizen, with no gender distinction,” he said.

    Also, Presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga described Badenoch’s claim as false.

    In a post on his X handle yesterday, Onanuga said Badenoch owed her fatherland an apology for the misleading statement.

    Read Also: Conservative voters doubt Kemi Badenoch’s suitability as UK PM – Poll

    He said: “Britain should send our lost daughter, Kemi Badenoch, home for a proper re-education. Section 25 of our Constitution defines who has the right to Nigerian citizenship.

    “Kemi Badenoch lied. She owes her fatherland some apology.”

    Quoting Section 25 of the Nigerian Constitution, Onanuga emphasised that every person born outside Nigeria is a citizen by birth if either of their parents is a Nigerian citizen.

    Quoting the section, he said: “25. (1) The following persons are citizens of Nigeria by birth, namely- (a) every person born in Nigeria before the date of independence, either of whose parents or any of whose grandparents belongs or belonged to a community indigenous to Nigeria; Provided that a person shall not become a citizen of Nigeria by virtue of this section if neither of his parents nor any of his grandparents was born in Nigeria.

    “(b) every person born in Nigeria after the date of independence, either of whose parents or any of whose grandparents is a citizen of Nigeria; and (c) every person born outside Nigeria either of whose parents is a citizen of Nigeria. (2) In this section, “the date of independence” means the 1st day of October 1960.”

  • Kemi Badenoch lied about Nigeria’s citizenship laws-Presidency

    Kemi Badenoch lied about Nigeria’s citizenship laws-Presidency

    The Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, has described as false the claim by the Leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, that she cannot pass her Nigerian citizenship to her children because she is a woman.

    Onanuga, in a post on his X handle today, said Badenoch owed her fatherland an apology for the misleading statement.

    The President’s Special Adviser urged Britain to send the Conservative Party leader, whom he described as “our lost daughter”, back to Nigeria for a proper re-education.

    “Britain should send our lost daughter Kemi Badenoch home for a proper re-education. Thanks to Shola Shogbamimu for enlightening the Tory politician. Section 25 of our constitution defines who has the right to Nigerian citizenship.

    “Kemi Badenoch lied. She owes her fatherland some apology.”

    Quoting Section 25 of the Nigerian Constitution, Onanuga emphasised that every person born outside Nigeria is a citizen by birth if either of their parents is a Nigerian citizen.

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    “25. (1) The following persons are citizens of Nigeria by birth, namely- (a) every person born in Nigeria before the date of independence, either of whose parents or any of whose grandparents belongs or belonged to a community indigenous to Nigeria; Provided that a person shall not become a citizen of Nigeria by virtue of this section if neither of his parents nor any of his grandparents was born in Nigeria.

    “(b) every person born in Nigeria after the date of independence either of whose parents or any of whose grandparents is a citizen of Nigeria; and (c) every person born outside Nigeria either of whose parents is a citizen of Nigeria. (2) In this section, “the date of independence” means the 1st day of October 1960,” he wrote he wrote.

    Badenoch, who was born in the United Kingdom in 1980 to Nigerian parents, made the claim during an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday while contrasting the immigration policies of Nigeria and Britain.

    “It’s virtually impossible, for example, to get Nigerian citizenship. I have that citizenship by virtue of my parents, I can’t give it to my children because I’m a woman,” she said.

    She argued that immigrants often exploit Britain’s system, adding that Nigerians easily become UK citizens whereas her children cannot obtain Nigerian citizenship.

    Badenoch spent much of her childhood in Nigeria before returning to the UK at age 16. She has three children with her a Scottish banker husband, Hamish Badenoch and adopted his surname after marriage.

  • FG debunks Badenoch’s citizenship claim

    FG debunks Badenoch’s citizenship claim

    The Federal Government has debunked the claims by Kemi Badenoch, leader of the UK Conservative Party that Nigeria law does not allow women to pass on citizenship to their children. 

    Badenoch had claimed that she is unable to pass on Nigerian citizenship to her children because she is a woman.

    While speaking with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria during an interview, Ms Badenoch said on Sunday that while many Nigerians are taking advantage of the UK’s relatively easy citizenship acquisition process, it remains “ virtually impossible to get Nigerian citizenship. I had that citizenship by virtue of my parents; I can’t give it to my children because I’m a woman.”

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    Reacting to the claim,  Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa told The Nation that the Badenoch claim was disturbing as the narrative is completely false.

    Ebienfa said section 25 of the Nigerian Constitution allows citizenship  by descent to children born abroad to either parent irrespective of gender.

    “This is a false and very disturbing narrative because Section 25 of the Nigerian Constitution 

    allows citizenship by descent to children born abroad if either parent is a Nigerian citizen, with no gender distinction,” he said. 

  • Badenoch: my children can’t get Nigerian citizenship because I’m a woman

    Badenoch: my children can’t get Nigerian citizenship because I’m a woman

    Leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, has declared that she cannot pass her right of Nigerian citizenship to her children because of her gender.

    Badenoch spoke yesterday in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria while trying to contrast the immigration policies of Nigeria and Britain.

    She told CNN that immigrants often exploit the British system, leaving the UK vulnerable to threats.

    When asked if she would permit a Nigerian immigrant to create a “mini-Nigeria” in the UK for cultural integration, her response was a swift “no”.

    “That is not right. Nigerians would not tolerate that. That’s not something that many countries would accept,” she added.

    “There are many people who come to our country, to the UK, who do things that would not be acceptable in their countries.”

    Badenoch cited her children’s “inability” to become Nigerians to stress her point.

    “It’s virtually impossible, for example, to get Nigerian citizenship. 
I have that citizenship by virtue of my parents, I can’t give it to my children because I’m a woman,” she said.

    “Yet loads of Nigerians come to the UK and stay for a relatively free period of time, acquire British citizenship. We need to stop being naive.”

    Read Also: Conservative voters doubt Kemi Badenoch’s suitability as UK PM – Poll

    Badenoch has three children with her husband.

    Contrary to Badenoch’s claim, section 25(1)(c) of the Nigerian Constitution states that a person born outside the country is a citizen of Nigeria if either of their parents is Nigerian.

    This means having just one Nigerian parent is sufficient for citizenship by birth.

    Born in the UK in 1980 to Nigerian Yoruba parents, Olukemi Adegoke spent much of her childhood in Nigeria before returning to the UK at age 16.

    She later married Hamish Badenoch, a Scottish banker, and adopted his surname, becoming Kemi Badenoch.

    Before becoming the Conservative leader, she previously worked in the cabinet for prime ministers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak from 2022 to 2024.

    Badenoch’s popularity has been hinged on her hardline views on immigration.

    In her  yesterday interview, she said she would ensure that it would be “a lot harder” for immigrants to get British citizenship under her leadership.