The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Kemi Badenoch

  • Badenoch: I don’t want Britain to be like poor Nigeria

    Badenoch: I don’t want Britain to be like poor Nigeria

    After the condemnation that greeted her previous derogatory remark about Nigeria, leader of the UK Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, has once again launched a fresh verbal attack on the country.

    Speaking on Thursday while delivering her first speech of the year at an event organised by Onward, a British think tank producing research on economic and social issues, Kemi  said she does not want the consequences of “terrible governments” like Nigeria to play out in Britain.

     “I grew up in a poor country, and I watched my relatively wealthy family become poorer and poorer and poorer despite working harder as their money disappeared with inflation,” she said.

    Read Also: Kemi Badenoch: It’s time for a rethink

    Badenoch, who migrated to the UK at 16 with her father’s last £100, described her determination to prevent Britain from experiencing the hardships she witnessed in Nigeria.

    “I’ve lived with the consequences of a terrible government that destroys lives, and I never ever want that to happen here,” Badenoch emphasized, linking her experiences to her push for a “better, richer, and safer” future for younger Brits.

    Before now,  Badenoch had openly criticized the country when she  described the Nigerian police as “armed robbers,” accusing them of intimidating citizens rather than protecting them.

    Her  controversial remark attracted criticisms from Nigerians including Vice President Kashim Shettima, who said “If she doesn’t want any association with the greatest black nation on earth, Nigeria, she should change her name.”

  • Coalition names Kemi Badenoch, Akinyemi winners of 2024 Yoruba Persons of the Year

    Coalition names Kemi Badenoch, Akinyemi winners of 2024 Yoruba Persons of the Year

    The Alliance of Yoruba Democratic Movements (AYDM) has named the Leader of the British Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, the winner of the 2024 Yoruba Person of the Year.

    AYDM also named a Russia-based Yoruba scientist, Dr. Samuel Olalekan Akinyemi, a co-winner of the award.

    Read Also: NDLEA seizes 40-ft trailer load of skunk, six cars in Abuja in midnight raid

    In a statement by its General Secretary Popoola Ajayi, AYDM, which comprises 130 member-organisations, said: “The two Yoruba personalities were the greatest inspiration in the Year 2024. They achieved rare feat in two realms: politics and science. The interesting aspect is that the two individuals live in two countries that do not share similar ideology, which exemplifies the plurality of Yoruba presence across the globe, irrespective of diverse ideologies of nations across the world.”

  • Kemi Badenoch: It’s time for a rethink

    Kemi Badenoch: It’s time for a rethink

    By Tunde Rahman

    Kemi Badenoch’s ill-advised denigration of Nigeria has refused to go away. Her belittlement of the country of her ancestry is still generating passionate public discourse within and outside the media space, and it appears the matter will not go away anytime soon.

    Exasperated by Kemi Badenoch’s misguided attacks on Nigeria, Vice President Kashim Shettima recently counseled her to drop the Kemi in her name and bleach her ebony skin to white to further appease her Tory party and British establishment. And perturbed and seemingly lost by all that, my daughter, Kemi Mushinat, who recently graduated in Communication Studies, asked what was wrong with the name Kemi. There is nothing wrong with the name, I explained. But a lot is wrong with Kemi Badenoch (Nee Adegoke), the Leader of the British opposition Conservative Party, who opted to behave, as the Yoruba would describe it, “bi omo ale to fi owo osi ju we ile baba e”, meaning like a bastard who would go out to denigrate her ancestry by pointing the offensive finger at her roots.

    Honour and dignity are inherent in the name Oluwakemi, indeed in any name. But what confers dignity, what glorifies a name, is the character the bearer brings into it. Kemi Badenoch left much to be desired, disparaging Nigeria, our motherland. She painted a gory picture of her growing up years in Nigeria from the middle of the 80s to around 1996, highlighting stories of poverty, infrastructure decay, decadence, corruption, police excesses, and leadership failure.

    Perhaps some of her narratives could be true, particularly in the time that immediately followed the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) misrule and the indiscretion of the emergent military regime. However, her stories reek of generalisations and prejudices often associated with most analyses by a section of Western media and commentators. They view Nigeria with their jaundiced lenses, describing the country as made of a Muslim North and Christian South, oblivious of the various Christian minorities in the North and, the plethora of Muslims in the South and the multiplicity of ethnic groups in the two divides that make a mockery of any analysis of a monolithic North or South. They view us Africans with many unproven, unorthodox assumptions.

    My problem is with Mrs. Badenoch, an African, whichever way you slice it, and the character she has chosen. When Vice President Shettima lambasted her for demeaning Nigeria, Kemi Badenoch thought she had a clincher:

    Read Also; Tinubu pledges completion of Eastern rail line

    “I find it interesting that everybody defines me as Nigerian,” she said. “I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity (Yoruba). That’s what I am. I have nothing in common with the people from the North of the country, the Boko Haram where the Islamism is; those were our ethnic enemies and yet you end up being lumped in with those people.”

    In that statement, the Tory leader disavowed Nigeria and excoriated the North but exalted the Yoruba. She repudiated the whole, attacking one part of the nation but embracing another. Kemi Badenoch grossly misfired, hiding under the finger of ethnic nationalism.

    Perhaps it would have been pardonable if, for instance, she opposed Nigeria’s federal system and canvassed regionalism or confederacy. To condemn one race and elevate another is like playing one part against another. That utterance is dangerous in a diverse and volatile society like ours. The North (read the Hausa-Fulani, Kanuri, Tiv, Birom, Mangu, Ibira, Nupe, and many others who cohabit the entire Northern region) is no enemy of the Yoruba as Mrs Badenoch insinuated. The North voted massively for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a Yoruba man, to emerge president in 2023, as they did for the late Bashorun MKO Abiola, the winner of the annulled June 12 election in 1993. To label them the enemies of the Yoruba is condemnable.

    Badenoch’s Yoruba roots emphasise good character and promote good neighbourliness, religious harmony, peaceful co-existence, respect for elders, and respect for other people’s rights. That is why Yoruba intermarry with members of different ethnic groups. It’s also commonplace in Yorubaland to find members of the same family having adherents of Islam and Christianity cohabiting together without any hassles. Boko Haram or its last vestiges poses a security challenge, perhaps a religious and sociopolitical challenge, for Nigeria, not just for the North or the North-east  which is why the government and our armed forces have battled to a standstill and are still battling the insurgents.

    Therefore, the values the UK Conservative leader espoused did not represent the Yoruba. They are not the values the Yoruba would showcase, uphold, and promote. Yoruba has a rich history of culture, tradition, leadership, and loyalty to constituted authority.

    Mrs Badenoch’s formative years, which she derided with negative stories of decadence, perfidy, and corruption, were part of Nigeria’s dark periods when the military held the country and the people by the jugular.

    Is Kemi Badenoch now giving the impression that nothing has changed in Nigeria, particularly in Lagos, where she grew up after birth in London? Is she giving the impression there have not been significant improvements in the standard of living and infrastructure, with the rehabilitation of existing roads and opening up of new ones; in transportation with the multi-modal system complemented by water transportation and now the rail system, among other things? Despite its challenges, there is no doubt there has been a remarkable development in Lagos from the foundation laid by then Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu (now President Tinubu) from 1999 to 2007 till the present Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to the point that Lagos has emerged as one of largest economies in Africa.  Lagos State has made significant progress across all indices of development such that if it were a country, it would have ranked the sixth largest economy on the continent.

    What has emerged in the entire Kemi Badenoch’s saga is her seeming double-face or multiple-face. When she was campaigning to represent her diverse Dulwich and West Norwood Constituency in the UK Parliament in 2010, she had appealed to the Nigerian community, comprising Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani and Igbo, under the aegis of “Nigerians for Kemi Badenoch,” pleading for help in the election. A campaign document that surfaced on social media showed she had reached out to all Nigerians in that constituency while highlighting her roots. In that document, Badenoch had said to her Nigerian supporters:

    “I need your help. I’m running for parliament in the 2010 UK general elections. The race is very tight. Last year, the News of the World surveyed this constituency, and the forecast was that I would win. Things are much tougher this year as the party has dropped nationally in the polls. I need your help.

    “I am asking for your help now to support a Nigerian trying to improve our national image and do something great here.”

    After winning the election, however, she deployed her situation in Nigeria as a talking point to rally support for her policies, for which she was accused of exploiting her roots for political gains.

    Her rhetoric has drastically changed with her emergence as the Leader of the Conservative Party. In the carriage, conduct and statements, she is now out to please the White establishment, particularly the White wing of her Conservative Party, subjugating her people to make Britain look good. She doesn’t mind running down anyone, including the Nigerian people and the British blacks generally.

    Will this advance her politics or status? I do not think so. The British respect culture and tradition. Running down a country’s history and culture may not attract much attention. Britain also respects her relations with other countries, particularly Nigeria, given our age-long relationship. Nigeria is a significant trade and investment partner of the UK in Africa. According to the UK Department for Business and Trade, as of December 20 2024, the total trade in goods and services (exports plus imports) between the UK and Nigeria amounted to £7.2 billion in the four quarters up to the end of Q2 2024, an increase of 1.2% or £86 million in current prices from the four quarters to the end of Q2 2023.

    Britain would not want to harm that substantial trade partnership and excellent relationship between the two countries in any way.

    Also, several Badenoch’s Conservative Party members do not share her attitude towards Nigeria. In Zanzibar, I recently ran into Jake Berry, a top Tory Party member and former Cabinet member in the UK. While discussing the Badenoch matter, he said most Conservative Party members disagreed with her.

    Kemi Badenoch has recorded an outstanding achievement in two decades of entering British politics. She joined the Conservative Party at the age of 25. Today, she stands not just as the Leader of the biggest party in Britain’s history but also as the highest black person in the United Kingdom. Her extraordinary accomplishment should have been used to inspire young people to achieve similar feats and as a foundation to inspire positive change in her country of origin, not to denigrate Nigeria or cause division and disaffection among her people. It is not too late for Mrs Badenoch to rethink and toe the line of rectitude.

    • Rahman is Senior Special Assistant on Media Matters to President Tinubu.

  • Kemi Badenoch: It’s time for a rethink

    Kemi Badenoch: It’s time for a rethink

    • By Tunde Rahman

    Kemi Badenoch‘s ill-advised denigration of Nigeria has refused to go away. Her belittlement of the country of her ancestry is still generating passionate public discourse within and outside the media space, and it appears the matter will not go away anytime soon.

    Exasperated by Kemi Badenoch’s misguided attacks on Nigeria, Vice President Kashim Shettima recently counseled her to drop the Kemi in her name and bleach her ebony skin to white to further appease her Tory party and British establishment. And perturbed and seemingly lost by all that, my daughter, Kemi Mushinat, who recently graduated in Communication Studies, asked what was wrong with the name Kemi. There is nothing wrong with the name, I explained. But a lot is wrong with Kemi Badenoch (Nee Adegoke), the Leader of the British opposition Conservative Party, who opted to behave, as the Yoruba would describe it, “bi omo ale to fi owo osi ju we ile baba e”, meaning like a bastard who would go out to denigrate her ancestry by pointing the offensive finger at her roots.

    Honour and dignity are inherent in the name Oluwakemi, indeed in any name. But what confers dignity, what glorifies a name, is the character the bearer brings into it. Kemi Badenoch left much to be desired, disparaging Nigeria, our motherland. She painted a gory picture of her growing up years in Nigeria from the middle of the 80s to around 1996, highlighting stories of poverty, infrastructure decay, decadence, corruption, police excesses, and leadership failure.

    Perhaps some of her narratives could be true, particularly in the time that immediately followed the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) misrule and the indiscretion of the emergent military regime. However, her stories reek of generalisations and prejudices often associated with most analyses by a section of Western media and commentators. They view Nigeria with their jaundiced lenses, describing the country as made of a Muslim North and Christian South, oblivious of the various Christian minorities in the North and, the plethora of Muslims in the South and the multiplicity of ethnic groups in the two divides that make a mockery of any analysis of a monolithic North or South. They view us Africans with many unproven, unorthodox assumptions.

    My problem is with Mrs. Badenoch, an African, whichever way you slice it, and the character she has chosen. When Vice President Shettima lambasted her for demeaning Nigeria, Kemi Badenoch thought she had a clincher:

    “I find it interesting that everybody defines me as Nigerian,” she said. “I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity (Yoruba). That’s what I am. I have nothing in common with the people from the North of the country, the Boko Haram where the Islamism is; those were our ethnic enemies and yet you end up being lumped in with those people.”

    In that statement, the Tory leader disavowed Nigeria and excoriated the North but exalted the Yoruba. She repudiated the whole, attacking one part of the nation but embracing another. Kemi Badenoch grossly misfired, hiding under the finger of ethnic nationalism.

    Read Also: Kemi Badenoch and Yoruba values

    Perhaps it would have been pardonable if, for instance, she opposed Nigeria’s federal system and canvassed regionalism or confederacy. To condemn one race and elevate another is like playing one part against another. That utterance is dangerous in a diverse and volatile society like ours. The North (read the Hausa-Fulani, Kanuri, Tiv, Birom, Mangu, Ibira, Nupe, and many others who cohabit the entire Northern region) is no enemy of the Yoruba as Mrs Badenoch insinuated. The North voted massively for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a Yoruba man, to emerge president in 2023, as they did for the late Bashorun MKO Abiola, the winner of the annulled June 12 election in 1993. To label them the enemies of the Yoruba is condemnable.

    Badenoch’s Yoruba roots emphasise good character and promote good neighbourliness, religious harmony, peaceful co-existence, respect for elders, and respect for other people’s rights. That is why Yoruba intermarry with members of different ethnic groups. It’s also commonplace in Yorubaland to find members of the same family having adherents of Islam and Christianity cohabiting together without any hassles. Boko Haram or its last vestiges poses a security challenge, perhaps a religious and sociopolitical challenge, for Nigeria, not just for the North or the North-east  which is why the government and our armed forces have battled to a standstill and are still battling the insurgents.

    Therefore, the values the UK Conservative leader espoused did not represent the Yoruba. They are not the values the Yoruba would showcase, uphold, and promote. Yoruba has a rich history of culture, tradition, leadership, and loyalty to constituted authority.

    Mrs Badenoch’s formative years, which she derided with negative stories of decadence, perfidy, and corruption, were part of Nigeria’s dark periods when the military held the country and the people by the jugular.

    Is Kemi Badenoch now giving the impression that nothing has changed in Nigeria, particularly in Lagos, where she grew up after birth in London? Is she giving the impression there have not been significant improvements in the standard of living and infrastructure, with the rehabilitation of existing roads and opening up of new ones; in transportation with the multi-modal system complemented by water transportation and now the rail system, among other things? Despite its challenges, there is no doubt there has been a remarkable development in Lagos from the foundation laid by then Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu (now President Tinubu) from 1999 to 2007 till the present Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to the point that Lagos has emerged as one of largest economies in Africa.  Lagos State has made significant progress across all indices of development such that if it were a country, it would have ranked the sixth largest economy on the continent.

    What has emerged in the entire Kemi Badenoch’s saga is her seeming double-face or multiple-face. When she was campaigning to represent her diverse Dulwich and West Norwood Constituency in the UK Parliament in 2010, she had appealed to the Nigerian community, comprising Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani and Igbo, under the aegis of “Nigerians for Kemi Badenoch,” pleading for help in the election. A campaign document that surfaced on social media showed she had reached out to all Nigerians in that constituency while highlighting her roots. In that document, Badenoch had said to her Nigerian supporters:

    “I need your help. I’m running for parliament in the 2010 UK general elections. The race is very tight. Last year, the News of the World surveyed this constituency, and the forecast was that I would win. Things are much tougher this year as the party has dropped nationally in the polls. I need your help.

    “I am asking for your help now to support a Nigerian trying to improve our national image and do something great here.”

    After winning the election, however, she deployed her situation in Nigeria as a talking point to rally support for her policies, for which she was accused of exploiting her roots for political gains.

    Her rhetoric has drastically changed with her emergence as the Leader of the Conservative Party. In the carriage, conduct and statements, she is now out to please the White establishment, particularly the White wing of her Conservative Party, subjugating her people to make Britain look good. She doesn’t mind running down anyone, including the Nigerian people and the British blacks generally.

    Will this advance her politics or status? I do not think so. The British respect culture and tradition. Running down a country’s history and culture may not attract much attention. Britain also respects her relations with other countries, particularly Nigeria, given our age-long relationship. Nigeria is a significant trade and investment partner of the UK in Africa. According to the UK Department for Business and Trade, as of December 20 2024, the total trade in goods and services (exports plus imports) between the UK and Nigeria amounted to £7.2 billion in the four quarters up to the end of Q2 2024, an increase of 1.2% or £86 million in current prices from the four quarters to the end of Q2 2023.

    Britain would not want to harm that substantial trade partnership and excellent relationship between the two countries in any way.

    Also, several Badenoch’s Conservative Party members do not share her attitude towards Nigeria. In Zanzibar, I recently ran into Jake Berry, a top Tory Party member and former Cabinet member in the UK. While discussing the Badenoch matter, he said most Conservative Party members disagreed with her.

    Kemi Badenoch has recorded an outstanding achievement in two decades of entering British politics. She joined the Conservative Party at the age of 25. Today, she stands not just as the Leader of the biggest party in Britain’s history but also as the highest black person in the United Kingdom. Her extraordinary accomplishment should have been used to inspire young people to achieve similar feats and as a foundation to inspire positive change in her country of origin, not to denigrate Nigeria or cause division and disaffection among her people. It is not too late for Mrs Badenoch to rethink and toe the line of rectitude.

    • Rahman is Senior Special Assistant on Media Matters to President Tinubu.
  • Kemi Badenoch and her father’s ‘Voice of Reason’

    Kemi Badenoch and her father’s ‘Voice of Reason’

    Kemi Badenoch, Britain’s Leader of Conservative Party and the Leader of Opposition, has gone through severe stress and strain since she first described Nigeria as a country plagued by “fear, insecurity, and corruption”, while reflecting on challenges of growing up in Lagos. She was accused of the denigrating the country of her parents.  Not even David Cameron who back in 2016 described Nigeria as “fantastically corrupt country” received the type of criticism that trailed what some considered as an unpatriotic assault on Nigeria.

    But if Badenoch, whose brand of ‘saying it like it is’ and promises to tell ‘hard truths about her country’ does not feel intimidated by a section of the British press who described her as “ever-out-raged Kemi” and a “passionate defender of free speech – apart from any criticism of her” (John Crace Feb 19), she is not going to be cowed by some self-proclaiming patriots, Nigerian journalists whose tantrums include describing her as one “who gets banana brain with bad parents without home training”; outbursts  that will have no effect on her future electoral fortune.

    But more unrestrained attack has since followed her declaration during an interview with the Spectator two weeks back that she identifies more with the Yoruba group than the people from northern Nigeria. This is the natural order of things. Our first allegiance is to our families through whom we acquire through a process called political socialization, the process by which the norms and values of our tribe that “are associated with performance of political roles and values guiding standards of political behaviours are learnt mainly through parents.

    “A man is born into his political party just as he is born into his probable future membership of in the church of his parents”. (Babawale 1999). We will see how this played out with Badenoch shortly.

    Tragically, most of our politicians who are below 65 years of age who at best can be described as ‘new breed’ politicians’  who have been misled by their military role models that one can be a Nigerian first without first being a good family man or a good representative of his people. And sadly, it is futile preaching to the converted in view of empirical evidences all around us.

    We have Chief Obasanjo who, after deriding his people by boasting he would rather be a Nigerian leader than a Yoruba leader, went on to become a military Head of State and two-term elected president with little or no contribution from his people beyond ensuring he lost at his ward and polling unit.

    We have General Theophilus Danjuma, Nigeria foremost philanthropist who spends money like water on account of having secured an oil well because he is first a Nigerian.  We have David Mark, who as a self-proclaiming Nigerian was in the senate for close to 20 years despite being a sworn enemy of those who fought and died for democracy in 1993. 

    Of course, there are scores of other Nigerian billionaires who made their fortune from the state because in Nigeria, it is literally possible to climb the palm tree from the top.

    But these aberrations should not make us become ashamed of our tribes. Since in the real world, studies have shown that you cannot love Nigeria without first loving your family or by first becoming a good representative of your people, no Nigerian should be ashamed to see herself or himself as a proud Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, Igbo, Ijaw, Urhobo, Ibibio, Munchi etc. man or woman.

    Kemi Badenoch who identifies herself as a proud Yoruba woman, by virtue of her political socialization, is a chip of the old block. She is a thorough daughter of her father Olufemi Adegoke, a medical doctor who, before his death two years back, was unarguably a good Nigerian despite his life-long struggle like most of his Yoruba compatriots, in the forefront of returning Nigeria to the abandoned path to freedom through restructuring.

    Badenoch’s ‘Voice of Reason’ (VOR) is a grouping of eminent Nigerians of Yoruba descent, who is accomplished professionals, academicians, entrepreneurs, business men and women and persons with private and public service experience

    The over-arching objective of VOR is the enthronement of a regime, or structure and culture of developmentally-oriented values and conduct of leadership, followership and governance of Yoruba land and specifically within a broader framework of Nigeria’s unity and all-round national development.

    VOR’s objective  include working for a new, equitable and efficient structure of governance in Nigeria; putting pressure on the central government to take appropriate steps towards meeting  the earnest yearnings of majority of Yoruba people for a restructuring of Nigeria; and impressing it on the central government that restructuring is the best and most peaceful path to national harmony and nation-building; enhancing the quality of stewardship, accountability, human asset development and mass wealth creation dynamic in the southwest geo political zone.

    VOR members committed themselves to keeping VOR strictly non-partisan.

    VOR argument for restructuring was anchored on the understanding among people of Nigeria and the departing colonial authority at independence and after independence that “the regions represented a group of people who had long standing affinities based on ethnic, linguistic, economic and through relationships.

    Kemi Badenoch’s father-led VOR believes for development to take place, we must first have a country and to have a country, the national question must be resolved. From the views of Yoruba leading light and those of the leaders of other Nigerian ethnic nationalities, there appears to be unanimity of purpose on issue of restructuring, in spite of their different political orientations. The followings attestations seem to confirm this:

    Lack of restructuring “is the cause of secessionist’s agitation – (Prof Banji Akinoye, Emeritus professor of history and prominent Yoruba leader).

    Restructuring will give sovereignty to states on education health, mineral resources (John Nwodo former president of Ohaneze).

    Break the myth of leadership in Nigeria. Give us a true fiscal federal constitution by the people and for the people and watch this land thrive in great leadership…This centralized governing system is all about the rule of men. Give us the rule of law, to be enshrined in the people’s constitution where no saint or devil is above the law (Prince Olagoke Omisore, The Conveners of Voice of Reason 2014).

    The current federal structure is unbalanced, unfair, over-centralised and therefore unstable. We firmly support the demand to restructure the federation with appropriate devolution of powers to the federating units and a commensurate revenue allocation formula” – (Prof Jerry Gana, national president, Middle Belt Forum).

    As presently constituted, it is unwieldy and a contraption for annihilation of the Middle Belt, our cultures and aspirations – (Dr Bitris Pogu)

    Restructuring must not be seen as a demand for a previously unknown Nigeria. What we demand is a return to a Nigeria we have had before, a Nigeria that worked for human progress and development – (Obong Victor Atta).

    “I am all ears to hear how the people will convince the powers-that-be on restructuring. Change begins with restructuring – (Alfred-Diete-Spiff ((Amayanabo of Twon-Brass and first governor of Rivers 1966-1976).

    “If rapid political progress is to be made in Nigeria, it is high time we were realistic about its constitutional problems; Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no Nigerians in the same sense as there are ‘English, Welsh or French. The word Nigerian is a mere geographical expression to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria from those who do not” – Chief Obafemi Awolowo in Path to Nigeria Freedom (London, Faber and Faber 1947) p 478.

    Read Also: JUST IN: Nigeria on path of recovery — Tinubu 

    “What Nigeria needs is a change that will make politics less attractive, make each state to develop at its own pace and do away with all shades and shapes of criminality – Chief Afe Babalola, SAN, founder of Afe Babablola University.

    There is an urgent need to restructure and reconfigure the country in a way that would suit all sections of the country – (Prof Wole Soyinka Nobel Laureate).

    We should adopt a restructured true federalism which I believe will provide the best basis for the realization of the Nigerian nation that we all desire, a stable, united and socio-economically fast developing country with a correspondingly accountable and citizen-empathetic leadership – (Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former Commonwealth Secretary General).

    The constitution of this country must be restructured towards true federalism. If it is not restructured, there will be no room for development. A country must exist before development. This country cannot exist without restructuring” – (Chief Ayo Adebanjo Afenifere leader).

    “I hope to live to see the day in a properly federalized and restructured Nigeria, the return of the groundnut and cotton pyramids to Kano wrapped with colourful hides and skin, huge cocoa plantations to the west, the palm oil and kernel industry to the east and the appearance of yam skyscrapers in Makurdi, Gboko and Jalingo” – General Ipoola Alani Akinrinade, civil war veteran.

    For close to 60 years we have groped in the wilderness.

    Voice of Reason (VOR), believing all the above Nigerian stakeholders cannot all be wrong, is today making a case for a return to the path to the Nigerian freedom we abandoned in 1966.

  • The Kemi Badenoch affair

    The Kemi Badenoch affair

    Leader of the British Conservative Party, Olukemi Badenoch, recently stoked controversy when she spoke her mind on Nigeria. She thought the place a jungle where fear reigned supreme, and the police unhelpful and even aggravating when it came to law enforcement. Those candid characterisations of Nigeria had not quite sunk in and the controversy abated before she added fuel to the anger raised against her views. She blithely said that she felt more Yoruba than Nigerian if it came to the question of her other identity, but nothing in common with northern Nigeria where jihadism was rampant. She obviously takes no prisoners and gives no quarter. Such candour had probably energised her politics and helped to advance her interest, both as a person and politician. Until she vented her spleen on Nigerians, and until she rose to become leader of the opposition in the British parliament, few knew her or cared about her politics, not to say her fiery language and perspectives.

    Today she is not an ordinary person or politician. By dint of hard work and brilliance, she has climbed the mountain of Britain’s ornate politics, one which resisted Europe’s disintegrative revolutions centuries ago, built the British Empire, virtually led the fight in two world wars, and nearly gifted the world a lingua franca. If God were to trouble the pool of British politics like an angel did at the Bethesda Pool in Jerusalem before and during the time of Jesus Christ to afford a lame man his healing, Mrs Badenoch could very well become prime minister. For now, her comments have so incensed some Nigerians that they would rather not have her win any election, let alone become prime minister. They view her comments on Nigeria as condescending, provocative and divisive. A few even thought her eager identification with her Yoruba heritage unforgivable and unbecoming of someone of her stature in British politics, up to the point of comparing her with the colourless former prime minister Rishi Sunak whom they described as brilliant.

    Remarkably, there was no part of Mrs Badenoch’s comments, made on two different occasions, that her critics could really fault. They do not deny the rampage of Boko Haram and its jihadist inclinations; what they found irritating was her generalisations about the North and the straitjacketing of a whole region. Boko Haram may have lasted more than 15 years, but her critics insist the region is as much a victim as it was the progenitor of the catastrophe, and that in any case, to dismiss the entire region as supporting the blight was mean and uncharitable. Her critics do not also deny the corruption plaguing Nigeria or the cancerous waywardness of its law enforcement agencies, particularly the police, but they insist that no country in the world, including the United Kingdom, is immune to the vices she assails. So, substantially, Mrs Badenoch observations were generally not untrue. They may be irreverent and offensively candid, but they amounted to a fairly factual, if impolitic, overview of Nigeria.

    Read Also: NYSC DG commends Plateau 1987/88 alumni for patriotic reunion

    Her critics were further incensed when she alluded rather inelegantly to Nigeria’s interethnic ‘wars’, concluding that the Southwest was arrayed in battle against the North. She drew no distinctions. Here the problem was not whether she generalised or was entirely wrong; the issue is that hardly any Nigerian is ignorant of the political undertow which every major ethnic group constitutes to the body politic, whether as exampled by former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s appeal to northern voter to vote for northern candidate, or the south-eastern voter to rally for Peter Obi using fiery anti-Yoruba or pro-Christian rhetoric. Public discourse all over Nigeria and debates in the National Assembly are festooned with ethnically hateful remarks indicating that so far, the country has made little or no progress in uniting its ethnic nationalities. That unity will of course not be achieved until bold political leaders genuinely persuaded about the benefits of unity work out a political structure that enables a seamless or at least less fractious relationship between regional or ethnic nationalities. Mrs Badenoch may at this moment be the lightning rod of Nigeria’s acrimonious politics, but she is not the cause. And, unlike many Nigerians, she is determined not to be politically correct.

    However, all that her critics are saying is that she was tactless, immature, and spiteful. Whether she likes it or not, they sum up, she has Nigerian blood, and she had an obligation to either defend or at least empathise with Nigeria. If she become prime minister, they wondered, would she continue to deprecate Nigeria? She was born in the UK, not Nigeria, but to Nigerian parents. She partly schooled in Nigeria where she encountered incidents that have scarred her, perhaps for life. More, she was born to a political restructuring activist father, a medical practitioner whose fervour for a new constitution was unequivocal, even before the concept of restructuring became popular. Unable to shake off the trauma she experienced, she had seethed at the declension that has overtaken Nigeria, its enduring underachievement, and the contradictions it still sadly professes. Could she have couched her fervency in relatively anodyne terms? Perhaps, and maybe as she progresses in politics and becomes a world figure she might become less trenchant and more accommodating. But to palliate her critics on the rhetorical terms their squeamishness seems to be dictating would probably turn her into someone alien to her mental constitution. In her politics, however, the Conservative Party is unrepentantly contextualised in the far right and nationalist politics swaying Europe, sometimes marked by incendiary rhetoric.

    Mrs Badenoch has clearly stirred up a storm in Nigeria – not anywhere else – for the world could not be bothered about the country’s perennial difficulties, whether imposed or self-inflicted. Right from her youth, she had learnt to speak her mind, whether that mind is nasty or benevolent. In the ongoing controversy frothing over Nigeria, she will, from all indications, continue to speak her mind. She may find reason, if sufficiently prodded, to mollify her critics now and again, but it is doubtful whether she will let herself be fully persuaded to coat in saccharine what some critics describe as her vitriolic outbursts. The vast majority of Nigerians identify with her sentiments, and would love to give full rein to the kind of things she said if they had possessed the grit. They think Nigerian unity a phony; they resent the methods of law enforcement agents, particularly the police; and they abhor corruption, at least if they are not the ones benefiting. What made Mrs Badenoch’s views controversial and unpalatable is that she had the courage to say openly and in unvarnished terms what most Nigerians think and say privately.

    Notwithstanding what many Nigerians think, unflattering outsiders’ views about the country should rouse citizens into remedial action rather than fury. Taking umbrage and acting sanctimonious every time someone verbally pulverises the country is unhelpful. Mrs Badenoch’s views became controversial because she had risen in stature in British society. Had she been a little-known woman anywhere, no one would have paid heed to her remarks. She is unlikely to rise or fall on account of what Nigerians think. Should she become prime minister, Nigeria will have to deal with her as it would deal with any head of government anywhere, diplomatically, decorously, and with less sense of entitlement. Her main considerations are the British voters and her party, the Tories, whose private views of Nigeria are unlikely to be less damning. Nigerians must, therefore, deal with the reality they have created for themselves, and find less emotional and self-righteous ways of rewriting their national story that continues to read like a slow, real-life apocalypse.

  • Kemi Badenoch and Yoruba values

    Kemi Badenoch and Yoruba values

    Born in the United Kingdom to Nigerian parents who belong to the Yoruba ethnic group of Southwestern Nigeria, the leader of the Conservative Party, 44-year-old Kemi Badenoch was brought to Nigeria as a child and returned to the UK at the age of sixteen. Kemi is a controversial figure on account of her devil-may-care speech style. For example, in response to Vice-President Kashim Shettima’s admonition to her to stop denigrating Nigeria, she remarked: “I find it interesting that everybody defines me as being Nigerian. I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity (Yoruba). That’s what I really am. I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, Boko Haram area, where the Islamism is. Those were our ethnic enemies and yet you end up being lumped in with those people.”

    Moreover, in the U.K., she was asked by a British interviewer: “Do you trust the British police?” To this question, she replied: “I do. I do. But um, you know, remember my experience with the police in Nigeria was very negative. And coming to the U.K., my first experience with the police was very positive. You know, the police in Nigeria would rob us. … I remember the police stole my brother’s shoes and his watch. … It’s a very poor country, so people do all sorts of things. And giving people a gun is just a license to intimidate. But that is not the bar we should use for the British Police. … When I was burgled, for example, the police were there. They were helpful before they eventually caught the person. This was in 2004, that was 20 years ago.”

    A Yoruba idiom would characterise Kemi Badenoch’s off-course response as follows: “À n wírú, ó n wírù.” (We’re talking about irú – locust beans, but she’s talking about – ìrù – tails.) In other words, she violates the conversational principle which requires that an answer be sufficiently relevant to its question. Moreover, Kemi’s stereotypically-rosy picture of British police does not accord with British media reports and official government records. For instance, on 10 July, 2020 Sky News reported as follows: “More than 200 serving police officers in the UK have convictions for criminal offences including assault, burglary, drug possession and animal cruelty.”

    Read Also: Nigeria’s quest for energy security gets muscular

    Furthermore, Sky News reported on 4 March, 2024: “Dozens of police officers across the UK have been convicted of crimes including rape, sexual assault and sex offences against children in the three years since the murder of Sarah Everard, new data shows. Officers have also been convicted of assault, possession of indecent images, harassment and controlling and coercive behaviour since 3 March 2021 – the day Ms Everard was abducted, a Sky News investigation has found. … Ms Everard was walking home in Clapham, south London, when she was abducted, raped and murdered by then-serving Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens.”

    In addition, on 17 June, 2024, The Standard reported: “More than 90 car thefts a day went unsolved in London last year, data revealed on Monday. Since the last election in December 2019, a staggering 106,742 motor vehicles have been stolen in the capital without a culprit being caught, according to statistics released by the Home Office. Some 85 per cent of car theft cases reported to the Metropolitan Police between 2020 and 2023 were closed without a suspect ever being identified. Last year just 480 car thefts were solved by the force – just over one per cent of all cases.” These cases of unresolved motor vehicle thefts and the other police crimes outlined above belie Kemi Badenoch’s rosy picture of British police. This proves that as a Yoruba proverb says, “Oníkálukú, abitielára.” (‘To each their own.’). It also validates the Yoruba proverb, “Ìpàkó-onípàkó làá rí; eni eléni ní rí teni.” (‘It’s the back of the head of others that we see, and it’s others who see the back of our own heads.’)

    With respect to corruption, Independent (UK), on 11 December, 2024, reported on Badenoch: “During her unsuccessful bid to lead the Tory party in 2022 she said: ‘I grew up in Nigeria and I saw first-hand what happens when politicians are in it 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.’” As with ignoring British police crimes, these views illustrate the Yoruba idiom “Arítenimòówí, a f”àpáàdì rìgìdì bo tiè m’ólè.” (‘One who sees the mote in other peoples’ eyes, but doesn’t see the log in hers.’) This is a veritable propaganda technique which magnifies the negative aspects of a person’s object of hate and suppresses the negative aspects of their object of admiration. This point would become clearer in the next paragraph.

    According to a 13 June, 2024 report by Simon Kuper in Financial Times, titled “How the wrong chaps took charge of British politics,” “The Good Chaps’ codes forbade stealing. Britain in their era aimed to deter corruption with unspoken guidelines, rather than with vulgar written rules. From the 1990s, Good Chaps began dying out. As memories of wars gave way to Thatcherite wealth-worship, the idea of public service came to seem a bit silly.” Moreover, a 1 December, 2024 report by Transparency International UK said: “the most comprehensive analysis of suspect funds in UK politics to date, finds that millions of pounds donated to political parties and their members have come from unknown or questionable sources, including those who have been accused or found to have bought political access or involved in criminality.”

    Kemi has also been reported to have said “I don’t care about colonialism,” and that “UK’s wealth is not based on White privilege and colonialism.” She would not have said this if she had asked her puppeteers about British-Iranian history of the late 1940s to early 1950s which was marked by Iranian resistance to the continuation of the age-long British appropriation of Iranian oil to build British wealth. The heroic Iranian resistance is marked by the turbulent relations between Iran and the West which persist till today. If Badenoch truly does not know that British wealth remarkably derives from colonialism, she should be an intensely ignorant and arrogant person; but if she knows that and yet denies the fact, she would be a thoroughly dishonest and highly mischievous person.

    In an 8 May, 2024 article titled, “Why is Kemi Badenoch denying Britain’s colonialism helped its economic growth?”, in the UK’s The Voice Online, Richard Sudan, noted: “Britain had an empire and the reality is that virtually nothing in Britain would be what it is today without the role of slavery and colonialism. … Kemi Badenoch knows this, but is less concerned with truth and is focused on her own political ambitions.” According to Richard Sudan, Badenoch’s kind of stand is “a gift to all those opposing reparations, a campaign that has been gaining traction in recent years.”

    In doing the hatchet job for the White establishment, to get or sustain tokenist benefits, Kemi has been validating the British slang ‘coconut’ or its American equivalent ‘house negro’. According to a Tuesday, 29 June, 2010, article by Nuala McGovern titled “Is the term ‘coconut’ racist?”, in the World Have Your Say Blog, hosted by BBC News, “The term coconut, has been used to accuse someone of betraying their race, or culture, by implying that, like a coconut, they are brown on the outside but white on the inside. Similar racial terms to denote ‘acting white’ while from another ethnic group include ‘bounty bar’, ‘oreo’ and ‘banana’.”

    The concepts of ‘coconut’ and ‘house negro’ are related to the Yoruba idea of àserílégbé which literally means ‘obsequious conduct that is aimed at getting a person a place in the house or keeping them there’, and idiomatically means ‘obsequious behaviour aimed at achieving social acceptability and sustaining privilege.’ When Kemi Badenoch’s behaviour is thus described as àserílégbé, it is implied that she suffers from very deep low self-esteem and social insecurity, and she denigrates Nigeria in order to fill the psychological void and get herself relief. In fact, reminiscent of the English proverb “There is no zeal like that of a convert,” Kemi is reported to have zealously said: “I am here to protect [the crown] and I will die protecting this country because I know what’s out there.”

    Asked by a BBC journalist in a “Newsnight” interview posted on 30 September, 2024, “Are you too gaffe prone?”, she replied: “I’ve never had a gaffe. I’m a good communicator.” She was further asked by the interviewer: “Are you too gaffe prone to become leader, to become Prime Minister?”; and Kemi replied: “I’ve never had a gaffe. The truth is not gaffes.” The BBC journalists’ question seems to cohere with the Yoruba proverb which says, “Twenty year old pounded yam can still burn the fingers.” (‘Iyán ogún odún a maa jó’ni lówó.’) Moreover, a Yoruba idiom which describes what appears to be Kemi’s heightened delusion or warped sense of self-perception or self-assessment is “Eni tí à n wò ní àwòsukún tí ó n wo ara rè ní àwòrérín.” (‘A person we are looking at tearily, but who is looking at themselves with mirth.’)

    Asked about the comments, Badenoch’s spokesperson said, as reported by Sky News on 11 December, 2024, she “stands by what she says” and “is not the PR for Nigeria. … She tells the truth. She tells it like it is. She is not going to couch her words.” This may make her “Elétí ikún.” (‘A squirrel-eared person who can’t, won’t or doesn’t listen to good counsel.’) This idiom alludes to ikún – a kind of squirrel that is hard of hearing or deaf. It also calls to mind the Yoruba proverb, “Kàkà kó dè lára ewé àgbon, kokoko ló n le sii.” (‘Rather than softening, palm frond leaf hardens.’) This makes her, in Yoruba idiomatic language, “Elénu razor” (‘A razor-sharp-tongued person’) or even “Elénu oró” (‘A poison-tongued person.’) Unbending dispositions like Kemi’s recall the Yoruba idiom “Gun esin ayán.” (‘Mount a cockroach-sized horse.’) Delusional horses of that kind usually don’t carry anybody far.

    Looking at the range of opinions about her within and outside the UK, the Conservative Party leader has acquired the image of an obsequious Kemi, ignorant Kemi, arrogant Kemi, dishonest Kemi, hypocritical Kemi, and intransigent Kemi. She seems to have in her personality all of the ingredients for the making of a tragic hero – a character with immensely astounding attributes which are undermined by equally fundamental flaws. Kemi Badenoch’s indiscretions and her rise within the British political hierarchy, all the same, may just be what is needed to sensitise Africans anew to rolling back, in significant ways, insidious neo-colonialism on the continent.

  • The Kemi Badenoch challenge

    The Kemi Badenoch challenge

    Her narrative of Nigeria, the country of her birth, is essentially a monotonous, one-track and static tale deliberately designed to further endear her to those who already have a jaundiced, perverse and derogatory perception of the capabilities of the black race and its claims to civilization and a shared equality of dignity with other races particular of the Caucasian variety. Mrs Kemi Badenoch has been especially voluble since her meterioc rise in British politics as leader of the Conservative Party and the opposition as regards the dysfunction, corruption, poverty and decadence that characterize contemporary Nigeria. It is difficult to fault her assertions that most Nigerian politicians are in public life for purposes of selfish aggrandizement than for the pursuit of the common good; that an institution like the Nigeria Police Force, for example, parades a good number of personnel who fall far short of the requisite professional and ethical standards or that essential facilities for a dignified life in a modern polity are inexcusably unavailable to the vast majority of the people.

    That is the reality of the Nigeria Kemi grew up in as a child in the 1980s and from which she has escaped courtesy of her British citizenship by birth and is responsible for her decision to tenaciously cling on to her adopted country and aggressively seek to cut all physical, emotional and psychological ties with the land from which her parents and their ancestors sprang. The opportunities offered her by Britain not only to acquire qualitative education but to also ascend to the elite rungs of that country’s politics may seem to validate Kemi’s strident and unrestrained denunciations of Nigeria’s failings. It is doubtful if her obvious ability and brilliance would have been given such fertile soil to flourish in this country.

    But there is also the danger that her negative narrative of Nigeria will help reinforce the prejudices of many of the far right white elements she seeks to court who may see her as another opportunistic black person from a failed country incapable of developing itself who has come to take advantage of a country built by the labour of others. It is impossible for Kemi to denigrate Nigeria in the way she is going about it without also devaluing her essence as a black person.

    Many Nigerians have identified with and supported Kemi’s vehement criticisms of the country for essentially partisan reasons – their grievances against the outcome of the last presidential election and the resultant current political status quo in the country. Thus, the opposition has chosen to read her scathing comments as directed against President Bola Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Vice President Kashim Shettima’s take that she is free to drop her Nigerian name, Kemi, if she detests the country so much further spurred many in the opposition to rally to her defense.

    Yet, the incidents that she cites to illustrate her negative depiction of Nigeria dates back to the late 1980s suggesting that the situation predates an administration that has been in office for less than two years since May 2023. Kemi’s criticisms, which cannot be dismissed as entirely baseless, thus constitute an indictment of the Nigerian political class as a whole across party demarcations as well as successive administrations in post-independence Nigeria.

    I certainly do not agree with those who argue that patriotic love for country should restrain any citizen from publicly and unreservedly condemning Nigeria’s all too obvious failings. But the enterprise of such criticisms must be predicated on intellectual honesty and factual balance. Kemi’s lived experience of the Nigeria she paints in putrid colours to the world is of the Lagos of the 1980s and possibly early 1990s. Can it be empirically valid that Lagos, as an example, has remained static and unchanged since then? Has there been no improvement in infrastructural facilities since then? What about the light rail or Bus Rapid Transit system which now define the city’s landscape but was absent at the time Kemi references?

    Before 1999, daylight Bank robberies were near daily occurrences in Lagos and armed robbers lay siege to estates and communities at night. Traffic and street lights were few and far between on Lagos roads; children carried chairs and benches to and from school daily while adults and children could be seen with all kinds of containers in search of water across the state. What about the mountains of refuse that defaced the state from Ikoyi to Ikorodu and Ikeja to Badagry?

    Can Kemi and her supporters honestly say that there have been no positive developmental attainments from the situation nearly three and a half decades ago that informed the Conservative Party leader’s experience of Nigeria and now even if we admit that much more progress ought to have been made? In the same vein, is Mrs Badenoch right in depicting Britain as a model of perfection devoid of the kind of flaws such as pervasive corruption that taint Nigeria? The answer is an emphatic no.

    Read Also: BUA chairman Rabiu endorses Tinubu’s economic reforms, urges patience

    Listen, for instance, to Carol Vorderman, the Welsh journalist, social critic and tv celebrity on the menace of corruption in the UK. Her words, “Yesterday, there was the Public Accounts Committee put out, and nobody’s reported it in mainstream media, that in the two years preceding Johnson becoming Prime Minister, there was an approximation of five and a half billion pounds of fraud and waste on government departments. In the following two years when Sunak was chancellor, that quadrupled to 21 billion pounds of fraud and it’s not being investigated. And this report said,  not that mainstream media reported any of it at all, that of the 7.9 billion pounds that went into COVID testing, 6 billion pounds of that was given to the companies recommended by Tory MPs and ministers and peers. It goes on and on and it’s not being reported. I could go on for hours about the corruption”.

    So much then for Mrs Badenock’s unceasing attempt to contrast an angelic Britain with an irredeemably demonic Nigeria. The reality may be far more complex than that and this is not in any way to suggest that the existence of corruption in Britain justifies its prevalence in Nigeria. But every community of flawed mortals has challenges with which it grapples not excluding the advanced western countries that she idolizes so uncritically. Indeed, the Conservative Party leader’s outlook may subconsciously be a function of the chronic inferiority complex arising from centuries of Nigeria and Africa’s encounter with slavery and colonial imperialism, which is a key factor in the continent’s protracted underdevelopment.

    Yet, her analysis sees no linkage between about five centuries of slavery, colonial exploitation and neocolonialism and the wealth of the West in contrast to the poverty in Nigeria that she contemptuosly refers to. Of course, this is not a line of argument worth pursuing too far as it gives the impression of seeking to find excuses for Africa’s indefensible  dismal post colonial developmental performance. Nigerians have ruled Nigeria for six and a half decades since 1960 and must bear the responsibility for whatever they have made of their country. On that, Mrs Banedock cannot be faulted.

    But then the disturbing poverty of historical consciousness in the Conservative Party leader’s analysis is evident in her response to Vice President Kashim Shettima’s jibe about her retaining a Nigerian Kemi identity of a country she so passionately detests. In her words, “I find it interesting that everybody defines me as being Nigerian. I identity less with the country than with the specific ethnicity (Yoruba). That’s what I really am. I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where the Islamism is, those were our ethnic enemies and yet you end up being lumped with those people”. In the first place, she appears oblivious of the diverse multiethnic, multicultural and multi religious composition of the North. There are substantial numbers of Yoruba who have lived in the North from pre colonial times just as the Hausa-Fulani communities in many of the Southwest states date back to over two centuries ago.

    Many states in the Northcentral and far North have considerable Christian populations just as Islam is deeply rooted in Yoruba land. Since precolonial times, there have been trade, marital, cultural and sometimes conflictual relationships between different primordial states and communities in the areas that today make up southern and northern Nigeria. And as Sam Omatseye pointed out in his column on Monday, the negative experiences she often narrates about Nigeria occured in Lagos in the Yoruba Southwest where she lived. When she talks about the north being “our ethnic enemies”, she is perhaps unaware of the protracted intra-Yoruba wars that lasted for over a hundred years before the colonial subjugation.

    But then, in the final analysis, Mrs Badenoch is entitled to her worldview and the extreme conservative ideology she has opted to identify with. There is little that anybody can do about that. However, there is much that can be done about the undeniable dysfunction and poverty in Nigeria she describes and the corruption, ineptness and lack of vision of the political class responsible for this. Part of the missing link in her analysis and those of her supporters is that, despite its own shortcomings and the complex context in which it operates, the Tinubu administration is taking far reaching steps to address the root causes of the country’s debilitating challenges fundamentally.

    The removal of the fuel subsidy that has saved humongous amounts of funds that has made it possible for most states to pay the new mininum wage of N70,000 with a number of states even exceeding this amount. The coming on stream of domestic crude oil refining through the new Dangote and rehabilitated Port Harcourt refineries, processes that had started under the preceding Buhari administration, and the envisaged ultimate mitigating impact on fuel prices. The merger of the parallel exchange rate markets and the elimination of the opportunities it provided for privileged and connected individuals to make instantaneous stupendous wealth without industry through arbitrage. The fiscal liberation of the local government councils from the financial asphyxiation of the states to promote the prospects of grassroots development.

    The empowerment of  states to generate and distribute electricity within their jurisdictions – an opportunity that a number of states are now taking advantage of with huge potential impact on the economy. The proposed thoroughgoing tax reforms which experts claim have revolutionary rejuvenating potentials for the Nigerian economy. These are a few of the key policy thrusts of the administration and they are beginning to bear tentative fruits. The country’s foreign reserves currently stands at about $42 billion, a considerable improvement. And the country recorded balance of trade surpluses of N6 trillion, N6.5 trillion and N6 trillion respectively over the last three quarters indicating steadily growing domestic productivity.

    The fierce opposition in many quarters to the reforms despite the cautious and restrained approach of the administration shows just how difficult engineering change in a complex polity like Nigeria can be. But the challenge of critiques such as those posed by Kemi Badenoch is that there is no option but to deepen and sustain the reforms until the country is placed on an irreversible trajectory of growth, development and prosperity. This long term goal must be calibrated with urgent and effective short term measures to tame current astronomical inflationary spirals, drastically bring down food and transportation costs in particular and address the biting poverty that breeds citizen cynicism and generates support for extremist perspectives of the Kemi Badenoch variety. There must also be a more concerted effort to tackle the corrosive corruption at the root of high levels of inequality and deepens the high rate of poverty in a richly endowed country where the vast majority of the people have no business being poor.

  • Badenoch’s negative portrayal of Nigeria Police unfair-PCRC

    Badenoch’s negative portrayal of Nigeria Police unfair-PCRC

     The Police Community Relations Committee (PCRC) has described the recent comments by the UK Conservative Party Leader, Kemi Badenoch, about  Nigerian Police as unfair.

    The National Chairman of PCRC, Alhaji Mogaji Olaniyan  expressed the view in an  interview  with News Agency Of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Abuja.

    NAN reports Badenoch had, in an interview with a UK journalist, accused the Nigerian Police of robbing citizens, saying that her brother’s shoes and watch were stollen by some officers.

    She further said  that men of  Nigeria Police Force usually deploy the guns and weapons in their possession to intimidate citizens they are supposed to protect.

    Olaniyan said  that a good number of police personnel in Nigeria had proven to be sincere and professional.

    He said the recent rejection of N20 million bribe by Mr Adegoke Fayoade, the Assistant Inspector-General of Police in charge of Zone 2 was an example of integrity and professionalism demonstrated by personnel of the Nigerian Police.

    The PCRC boss further said the recent arrest of 113 foreigners in Jahi area of Abuja on Nov. 3 over cybercrime was also an achievement deserving acknowledgement of police efficiency.

    “While we are not denying the fact that there are challenges and room for improvement, we must not forget the great dangers of ridiculing our country.

    “It is an undeniable fact that many horrible things happened and are  still happening  in foreign countries, particularly in the UK and US ,that  not reported by their media.

    Read Also: Kemi Badenoch and how not to denigrate your country

    “Rather than ridiculing the Nigeria Police, it would have been better for Badenoch to use her good position to impact positively on the system,” he said.

    He said the UK Police ,in the 60s, 70s and 80s, was  notorious for corruption, intimidation and harassment of their citizens and foreigners.

    The PCRC boss said  citizens did not  expose those issues to the  international community but instead supported  initiatives and  reforms to change the narrative.

    “It is possible that Badenoch or her family members were  stopped or interrogated by the Police in Nigeria over an issue which prompted that  derogatory comments.

    “This should never take away or ignore the great works of the police in Nigeria, especially, under the current leadership,” he said.

    The chairman, while acknowledging Badenoch’s achievements , also urged her to be fair and balance her views on Nigeria .

    He urged her to avoid sweeping comments and generalisation.

    (NAN)

  • Kemi Badenoch and how not to denigrate your country

    Kemi Badenoch and how not to denigrate your country

    • By Zayd Ibn Isah

    The leader of the British Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, recently found herself at the centre of heated controversy after her unsavoury remarks about Nigeria sparked widespread outrage. In one of her videos circulating on social media, Kemi stated that she doesn’t want her adopted country, Britain, to “look like the one she ran away from.” Unsurprisingly, this statement did not sit well with many well-meaning Nigerians, including Vice President Kashim Shettima, who found it far from amusing.

    Born in Wimbledon, London, Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke, now known as Kemi Badenoch, spent her early years shuttling between Lagos, Nigeria, and the United States, where her mother, a professor of Physiology, lived and lectured. Kemi is always quick to reference her African lineage, yet whenever she does, she peddles a single narrative of suffering, underdevelopment, and lack. Her remarks remind me of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story.” Kemi Badenoch once described Nigeria as a living hell—a place where she had to walk miles to fetch water and where, according to her, “lizards run out of the taps.”

    This childhood experience, as narrated by Kemi to her British audience, doesn’t add up. According to information available on Wikipedia, her mother travelled from Nigeria to the UK to give birth at St. Teresa’s private hospital before the British Nationality Act 1981 abolished automatic birth-right citizenship for those born in the United Kingdom. She then returned to Nigeria shortly after Kemi was born. Now, an average Nigerian family living in Lagos on a meagre salary could not have afforded such expenses to travel to London to give birth. They would have opted for a general hospital in Oshodi or Idumota. This should cast doubt on Kemi’s claim of walking miles to fetch water!

    Even if that is her reality, is Kemi’s put-down necessary? Such denigration might be excusable from a foreigner, but here we have a Nigerian stooping low to pander to the sentiments of her adopted country, essentially saying what they want to hear to gain favour.

    One is forced to wonder if Kemi Badenoch is merely sticking to a familiar script by ostensibly selling her fatherland short to bolster her chances of becoming the British Prime Minister one day. While we wish her success in her political aspirations, we must remind her of the time-tested African adage: “A man who denigrates his father or place of origin to gain applause is like a child who defecates in his own mother’s lap”.

    Read Also: FG earmarks N250bn for Lagos-Abuja rail project in 2025 budget

    Her divisive rhetoric extends even further. Kemi, in another moment of self-serving commentary, declared that she is Yoruba and has “nothing in common with people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where Islamism is.” This inflammatory statement, rife with stereotypes, not only seeks to disassociate her from a significant portion of Nigeria’s population but also perpetuates a dangerous narrative that feeds into ethnic and religious divides.

    Such a remark is deeply irresponsible, especially coming from someone of Nigerian heritage. Nigeria’s strength lies in its diversity—over 250 ethnic groups and multiple religions coexisting under one flag. Reducing a region and its people to a single negative label is not just inaccurate but harmful, as it reinforces stereotypes that undermine national unity and mutual understanding.

    Kemi may be seen as suave and savvy in the UK for casting aspersions on Nigeria, but history is replete with Nigerians who were once darlings of the British media, only to be cast aside when the tides turned. In the end, they often ran back to the country they once disparaged. She may think she has escaped Nigeria for good, but as Chinua Achebe reminds us in Arrow of God: “The little bird which hops off the ground and lands on an ant-hill may not know it, but it is still on the ground”.

    Nations, like individuals, have imperfections. Nigeria is no exception, grappling with corruption, insecurity, and economic woes. Yet, these challenges are not unique to Nigeria. Many nations face similar struggles but are seldom dissected with the same fervour by their own nationals in public. When Nigerians, especially those in influential positions, speak ill of the country, it reinforces stereotypes and undermines efforts to rebrand and develop the nation.

    In an effort to address Kemi’s persistent denigration of Nigeria, Vice-President Shettima suggested that she “remove the Kemi from her name” if she was not proud of her “nation of origin.” Badenoch’s tone-deaf response, issued through her spokesman, was that “she stands by what she says” and “is not the PR for Nigeria.”

    Clearly, this stubborn response only serves to worsen matters. Let’s be frank: Nigeria does not need her PR. And even if we did, we would not force her. What we are asking from her is not too much. If you are not the PR for Nigeria, then do not be the opposite. Besides, this country already has great men and women, both at home and abroad, who are flying its colours high. Individuals like Amina J. Mohammed, Akinwumi Adesina, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and even footballer Ademola Lookman have shown the world that Nigeria’s strengths and talents far outweigh its challenges.

    Badenoch’s remarks serve as a cautionary tale for all Nigerians, whether at home or abroad. Constructive criticism is necessary for growth, but the manner in which such critique is delivered matters immensely. Leaders and public figures must balance honesty with diplomacy, ensuring their words do not inadvertently harm the very people and places they claim to care about.

    Badenoch could take a cue from former American President Barack Obama, who never denigrated Kenya, his father’s homeland, despite its numerous challenges. Instead, he celebrated Kenya’s potential and its role as a symbol of hope for Africa. Similarly, great Nigerians in the diaspora, like the aforementioned, exemplify how to critique one’s homeland constructively while celebrating its culture, people, and aspirations. They understand the weight of their words and use them to inspire hope, not despair.

    It is worth noting that narratives about Nigeria, or any country, are often influenced by those who control the global conversation. For every criticism, there should be an equal effort to highlight the country’s resilience, cultural richness, and untapped potential. A nation’s story is multifaceted, and no single aspect should define it.

    That said, although Kemi has goofed, she is still one of us. We will not throw the baby out with the bathwater. However, she must learn from those who have gone before her. Rishi Sunak never spoke ill of India, yet he became the British Prime Minister. Kemi does not need to ride on Nigeria’s shortcomings to reach the UK government house. After all, it is the Nigerian spirit in her that is propelling her to greatness.

    Badenoch’s case underscores the need for Nigerians to take ownership of their narrative. From the halls of Westminster to the streets of Lagos, every Nigerian has a role in shaping the image of the country. While acknowledging our flaws, we must also celebrate our strengths, countering negativity with hope and progress.

    Criticism, when done with love and an eye toward solutions, can inspire change. But when laced with disdain, it alienates and demoralises. Patriotism is not blind loyalty, but neither is it relentless disparagement. It is a delicate balance—a lesson Kemi Badenoch, and all of us, would do well to remember.

    •Isah can be reached at lawcadet1@gmail.com