Kemi Badenoch: “I No Longer Identify As Nigerian”

UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has stated that she no longer identifies as Nigerian, despite her Yoruba heritage and having spent part of her childhood in Lagos.

Speaking on the Rosebud podcast, Badenoch said she hasn’t held a Nigerian passport for more than two decades. While acknowledging her Nigerian roots, she emphasized that her sense of identity has changed over the years.

“I’m Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there because of my parents,” she said. “But by identity, I’m not really.”

Kemi Badenoch explained that although she is familiar with Nigeria and still has family there, her idea of home is now centered around her life in the UK.

“I know the country very well, I have a lot of family there, and I’m very interested in what happens there. But home is where my now family is.”

Born in London in 1980, Badenoch spent her early years between Nigeria and the United States before returning to the UK at age 16. Her parents encouraged the move due to political and economic instability in Nigeria.

“There is no future for you in this country,” she recalled her parents saying at the time.

Although she was born in the UK, Badenoch noted that she received British citizenship just before the Thatcher government ended automatic birthright citizenship in 1981.

“Finding out that I did have that British citizenship was a marvel to so many of my contemporaries,” she said.

When her father, Dr. Femi Adegoke, passed away in Nigeria in 2022, she had to apply for a visa to attend his funeral. She described the process as a “big fandango.”

“The Conservative Party is very much part of my family — my extended family, I call it.”