Port Harcourt — Nigerian-parented British politician and leader of the Conservative Party, Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch has refused to pick our calls and we’re angry. I’ve gone the extra mile to state her full names to dissolve any doubt on her Yoruba roots. We didn’t mind being ignored until last month when she became the leader of the party which lost the general election in that country in July. The role makes her a potential Prime Minister and Nigerians took note. The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission complained that it had contacted her office but received no response.
Mrs Badenoch, no I insist on calling her Sis ‘Kemi, has not helped matters herself. As far as we can tell, she has made no reference to her country of origin. We could have at least been comforted by such indirect acknowledgement until the time she decides to stop wasting our airtime! Nigeria’s Vice President Kashim Shettima weighed in this week with what we can take as the view of the Federal Government on this vexatious and indecipherable indifference to the motherland. “We are proud of her in spite of her efforts at denigrating her nation of origin,” he said at the 10th Annual Migration Dialogue at State House, Abuja. He went on to say she was free to even drop her Yoruba name “if she was not proud of her nation of origin.”
In a swift retort, Sis ‘Kemi said she stood by her comments about Nigeria. Two years ago, she had spoken of her childhood experience: “I grew up in Nigeria and I saw firsthand when politicians are in it for themselves. When they use private money as their piggybanks, when they promise the earth and they pollute not just the earth, but the whole political atmosphere with their failure to serve others.” She repeated the comments at a conference of her party this year when she recalled instances of robbery and lawlessness in Lagos “where fear was everywhere.”
Speaking while visiting the United States this week she presented Lagos as “a place where almost everything seemed broken.” Referring to the criticism of the Nigerian Vice President, her spokesman said she “stands by what she says” and “is not the PR for Nigeria,” adding, “she tells the truth. She tells it like it is. She is not going to couch her words.”
‘Sis Kemi has come a long way having been born in Wimbledon in 1980 when her mother travelled to the UK to take advantage of the British Nationality Act which granted automatic citizenship based on birthright. The Act was abolished in 1981. ‘Kemi lived in Lagos, Surulere to be precise and returned to the UK, where she took a masters degree in engineering. Married to a banker with three children, ‘Kemi ran unsuccessfully for a political office in 2012 at the start of a career that has seen her emerge as the first Black leader of a major political party in the UK, and the fourth female head of the 190-year-old Conservative Party.
In examining the controversy about her apathy or hostility towards her country, we will do well to separate emotions from the truth. No one has accused Sis ‘Kemi of lying in her comments on the state of things in Lagos and Nigeria generally. Our Vice President didn’t. His anger then is that she said it at all. And our collective disappointment is that the leader of a major political party in Britain hasn’t reconnected with her roots. But come to think of it, who really cares about that? I suspect Nigerians are confusing the British system with ours. With the man-know-man syndrome in Nigeria, we are led to think that, having a Nigerian as a top political leader or the Prime Minister in the UK, gives us a special seat in the estimation of the British society or way of life. Not at all. They have a system that runs on auto pilot and any leader who tampers with it does so at their risk.
At best, Nigerians have bragging rights on Sis ‘Kemi’s accomplishments. If we curtail our expectations and live in the reality of international relations where interest determines interactions among nations, we will be busy building a better Nigeria rather than get angry with her for telling the truth, regardless of how inconvenient it is. Frankly, I don’t care about who the British Prime Minister is. I care about my welfare – the cost of food and fuel and how I can sleep with two eyes closed and drive safely on our streets. Vice President Shettima should roll up his sleeves and get to work and not bother about Sis ‘Kemi’s so-called denigration of her country.
