Kemi Badenoch has defended her previous remarks about Nigeria after the country’s Vice President accused her of disparaging it.
The Conservative Party leader, who was born in the UK but spent much of her childhood in Nigeria, has often spoken about growing up in an environment of fear and insecurity in a nation struggling with corruption.
On Tuesday, Nigerian Vice-President Kashim Shettima suggested that Badenoch should “remove the Kemi from her name” if she was not proud of her “nation of origin.”
Asked about Shettima’s comments, Badenoch’s spokesman said she “stands by what she says” and “is not the PR for Nigeria”.
“She is the leader of the opposition and she is very proud of her leadership of the opposition in this country,” he told reporters.
“She tells the truth. She tells it like it is. She is not going to couch her words.”
During a speech on migration in the Nigerian capital Abuja, Shettima said his government was “proud” of Badenoch “in spite of her efforts at denigrating her nation of origin.”
Shettima was met with applause when he said: “She is entitled to her own opinions; she has even every right to remove the Kemi from her name but that does not underscore the fact that the greatest black nation on earth is the nation called Nigeria.”
He contrasted Badenoch’s approach with that of her predecessor, Rishi Sunak—the UK’s first prime minister of Indian heritage—whom he described as “a brilliant young man” who “never denigrated his nation of ancestry.”
It is unclear which specific comments Shettima was referring to, but Badenoch has frequently discussed her Nigerian upbringing in her speeches and interviews.
Born Olukemi Adegoke in Wimbledon in 1980, she spent her early years in Lagos, Nigeria, and in the United States, where her mother, a physiology professor, taught.
She returned to the UK at age 16 to live with a family friend due to the deteriorating political and economic situation in Nigeria and to pursue her A-levels.
After marrying Scottish banker Hamish Badenoch, she adopted her husband’s surname.
At this year’s Conservative Party conference, Badenoch contrasted the freedoms she found in the UK with her childhood in Lagos, where “fear was everywhere.”
She described the city as lawless, recalling hearing “neighbors scream as they are being burgled and beaten—wondering if your home will be next.”
During a recent tour of the US, she referred to her home city as “a place where almost everything seemed broken.”
These experiences, she said, played a significant role in shaping her conservative beliefs and distancing her from socialism.