“Control your tongue. Watch your words before they leave your mouth. Once uttered, it would be hard to retract them. Remember, some wounds even apologies won’t heal.” — muftimenkreminders on Instagram
I had struggled to keep a promise I made to myself in November 2024 never to get involved in the virulent pushbacks against the verbal indiscretions of the leader of the Conservative Party in the UK, Mrs Kemi Badenoch. Although she had repeatedly demonstrated contempt for her Nigerian heritage, I thought it wouldn’t be in the interest of the fowl species for one cock to peck at the entrails of a disembowelled hen. Didn’t they say some mothers do have them?
Olukemi Olufunto “Kemi” Adegoke was born on 2 January 1980 in Wimbledon, London, by Mrs Feyi Adegoke who had travelled from Nigeria to the United Kingdom for medical treatment, and had given birth in St Teresa’s Maternity Hospital. This was a time when the British Nationality Act which guaranteed automatic birthright citizenship for those born in the UK was still in force. Kemi’s mother returned to Nigeria with her newborn baby shortly after.
Middle Class
Her father, Femi Adegoke, was a general practitioner and publisher while her mother, Feyi, was a professor of physiology at the University of Lagos. She is one of the three Adegoke children. She has often spoken about having a “very tough upbringing” in Nigeria in spite of the middle class status of her family and growing up in urban Surulere, Lagos. She attended International School at the University of Lagos.
But she is never one to count her blessings. While acknowledging that she came from a middle class background, she nonetheless in 2018 thumbed down her relatively privileged upbringing: “Being middle class in Nigeria still meant having no running water or electricity, sometimes taking your own chair to school”. Many Nigerians have accused her of engaging in flights of fancy in which she deploys craftily disguised hyperboles and outright untruths in her determination to de-market Nigeria.
Among other claims, she has described Nigeria as an unsafe and underdeveloped country where the police once stole her brother’s wristwatch and shoes. She has even uttered ethnic slurs against some micro-nationalities in the country. As far as she is concerned, she is British first, second and last, and her Nigerianness is but an accident. She didn’t take any notice of the fact that Nigerians celebrated her emergence as Tory Leader and genuinely wished her well. The usual refrain, “Naija no dey carry last” rented the air at the time. However, later events indicated that Kemi herself, like Caesar, derided the base degrees from whence she had ascended.
I have been a columnist longer than Kemi Badenoch has been alive. I have learnt over the years to avoid dog-eat-dog situations where possible. I had honestly thought Kemi would have taken the counsel of the hundreds of thousands of netizens who descended on her online and counselled her to retrace her steps because no true freeborn points to her father’s house with her proverbial left hand. Barack Obama did not despise his Kenyan heritage when he became the US president; neither did former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak find it necessary to insult India in order to please whites in the UK. But not Kemi.
As my grandmother would say, rather than dispel rumours of witchcraft and give relief to her accusers, the local witch compounds the situation by giving birth to a coven of female children. One witch rolls on top of the other… if you get the drift.
Nigerian Citizenship
It was only a matter of time for Kemi to invent another lie against Nigeria, which she did last week. Committing another unforced error, she claimed that even if she had wanted to, she was ineligible to present her children for Nigerian citizenship because the law discriminates against women. Kemi has a Masters in Computer Engineering and an LLB, for crying out loud! If she wasn’t sure about anything, she knew that the answer was just a click of the mouse away. But she doesn’t have that kind of respect for her heritage.
She didn’t bother to check. Her prejudices were enough armour against any mistake. And so, the daughter of Adegoke, wife of Hamish Badenoch, mother of three beautiful children and Tory Leader exposed her laughable ignorance to the whole wide world! And she has made it known, ‘To Whom It May Concern’, that her next battle is to make it more difficult for newcomers to attain British citizenship.
For the records, the Nigerian constitution does not discriminate against female citizens in the way Kemi has alleged.
Citizenship by birth: Section 25 of the Nigerian Constitution states that people eligible for citizenship under this category are: Individuals that are born in the territory of Nigeria after 1 October 1960 that have at least a parent or grandparent who belongs or belonged to a community indigenous to the geographical location known as Nigeria.
This subsection lays emphasis on the word ‘indigenous’ to Nigeria, which means that you must have blood ties to Nigeria. Kemi was born of Yoruba parents. She is a full blooded Nigerian. Her children are entitled to Nigerian passports through their mother. The constitution expressly states that individuals born outside of Nigeria whose parents or grandparents were or are citizens of Nigeria are eligible to apply for citizenship of Nigeria by birth as a matter of right.
While Kemi is struggling with her psychological manacles, it is gratifying to note that other celebrities of Nigerian origin such as the former World Heavyweight boxing champion, Anthony Joshua; Arsenal Football Club superstar, Bukayo Saka; former UFC Middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya; former UFC Welterweight champion, Kamaru Usman; Galatasaray soccer pearl, Victor Osimhen; and the boxer with the fastest victory in boxing history, Efe Ajagba —are all proud to be associated with Nigeria. In fact, most of them are running youth development programmes to give something back to the society.
Whether art imitates life or perhaps it is life that imitates art, Kemi’s predilection has already been diagnosed by the Ugandan-born literary giant, Okot p’Bitek, in his work, Song of Ocol. In the poem Ocol, the alienated African, despises everything connecting him to his ancestry. Sad to say, Kemi is just Ocol in skirts and braids.
Song Of Ocol
What is Africa
To me?
Blackness,
Deep, deep fathomless
Darkness;
Africa,
Idle giant
Basking in the sun,
Sleeping, snoring,
Twitching in dreams;
Diseased with a chronic illness,
Choking with black ignorance,
Chained to the rock
Of poverty,
And yet laughing,
Always laughing and dancing,
The chains on his legs
Jangling;
… Stuck in the stagnant mud
Of superstitions,
Frightened by the spirits
Of the bush, the stream,
The rock,
Scared of corpses. . .
… Child,
Lover of toys,
Look at his toy weapons,
His utensils, his hut….
Toy garden, toy chickens,
Toy cattle,
Toy children. . .
Timid,
Unadventurous,
Scared of the unbeaten track,
Unweaned,
Clinging to mother’s milkless breasts
Clinging to brother,
To uncle, to clan,
To tribe
To blackness,
To Africa,
Africa
This rich granary
Of taboos, customs,
Traditions. . . .
Mother, mother,
Why,
Why was I born
Black?
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