Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has said she no longer considers herself Nigerian and has not held a valid Nigerian passport for over 20 years. Speaking on the ‘Rosebud’ podcast, Badenoch reflected on her identity and background, clarifying that while her heritage is Nigerian, her sense of belonging lies elsewhere.
“I’m Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there because of my parents, but by identity I’m not really,” she said.
“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.”
Badenoch, who was born in London in 1980 and spent much of her childhood in Nigeria and the United States, returned to the UK at age 16 to continue her education amid political and economic instability in Nigeria. She moved in with a friend of her mother’s to study for her A-levels.
Reflecting on her return to Britain, she said her parents saw the move as necessary. “There is no future for you in this country,” she recalled them saying. “I think the reason that I came back here was actually a very sad one.”
Badenoch noted that although she was born in the UK, her British citizenship came just before the abolition of birthright citizenship under Margaret Thatcher 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, Badenoch had to obtain a visa to visit, which she described as a “big fandango.”
Badenoch, who now leads the Conservative Party, described her current family, which includes her husband, children, and extended relatives, as the core of her identity. “The Conservative Party is very much part of my family, my extended family, I call it,” she said.