Nigerian-born leader of the UK Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, has once again, fired demeaning shots at the African country, warning the British government against descending to a level where it would destroy lives like it is being done by the Nigerian government.
While delivering her first speech of the year last Thursday at an event organised by Onward, a British think tank producing research on economic and social issues, Badenoch said she did not want Britain to be like a “poor” country like Nigeria where “terrible” leadership has continued to destroy the lives of Nigerians.
The Tory leader went on to highlight the importance of building trust, saying the Conservative Party is the right group to fix Britain, emphasizing that if the UK does not make proper reforms, it stands the risk of becoming like Nigeria.
“I grew up in a poor country and watched my relatively wealthy family become poorer and poorer, despite working harder and harder as their money disappeared with inflation,” she said.
“I came back to the UK aged 16 with my father’s last £100 in the hope of a better life. So I have lived with the consequences of terrible governments that destroy lives, and I never, ever want it to happen here.
“And why does this matter so much to me? It’s because I know what it is like to have something and then to lose it. I don’t want Britain to lose what it has,” she reiterated.
This is not the first time that the Nigerian-born politician will dominate the headlines with disparaging commentaries about Nigeria, often painting the country in very bad light.
Towards the end of 2024, Ms Badenoch was in the news for the wrong reasons when she described the Nigerian police as “armed robbers,” accusing them of intimidating citizens rather than protecting them.
Her comments had elicited scathing responses from Nigerians who viewed her controversial criticisms as demeaning with the aims of disparaging the image of the country.
Among those who took exception to her comments was Vice President Kashim Shettima who condemned her concerted efforts at bringing her country of birth to disrepute.
“Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the British Labour Conservative Party, we are proud of her, inspite of her efforts at denigrating her country of origin. She is entitled to her own opinion, she has even the right to remove the Kemi in her name, but that does not underscore the fact that the greatest black nation is the country called Nigeria.
“If she doesn’t want any association with the greatest black nation on earth, Nigeria, she should change her name,” Shettima had said.
Former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, also described Badenoch as a leech who hates her country of birth with a passion.
In a post on his X handle, FFK had called the UK politician a “beast” who “refused to acknowledge the fact that the British police are amongst the most institutionally racist and corrupt in the world, that many black people, including Nigerians, have been framed, persecuted, tortured, illegally incarcerated, maliciously prosecuted and killed by them over the years and that thousands of Nigerians are butchered every year on the streets of the UK in violent knife crimes which the police turn a blind eye to simply because most of the victims are black.”
He went on to say, “Given her views about our policemen one wonders why she insists on her mother having police protection in Lagos.
“Why can’t she bring British policemen over here to do that given the fact that she “trusts them” & believes that all our security personnel “are thieves” and that we are such a “poor country.
“The next thing she will allege is that the Nigerian police officers that are protecting her family in Lagos have stolen her mothers underwear or worse still that they have kidnapped her.
“The Beast says she believes that colonialism was a good thing & that Nigeria was better off when she was a British colony,” FFK had posited.