There are different ways to dissect the Kemi Badenoch controversy. My observation on the debate though, and I might be wrong about that, is that many of those who have argued that there is “nothing wrong” with Kemi Badenoch’s posture and “truths” about Nigeria, might be confusing speaking up for/to the country, which should be encouraged, and talking down on Nigeria, which is what Kemi does. I am not sure anyone has said it’s wrong to criticise Nigeria or the leadership. The argument has been about the quality of judgement behind standing on an elevated platform abroad to denigrate Nigeria, especially when the context and occasion have nothing to do with the country.
In addition to that is the misrepresentation that has become rife that Kemi’s cold shoulder towards Nigeria is a recent development, and a response to solicitation from Nigeria/Nigerian leadership/Nigerians to hold onto her coattails, and tap her for PR purposes. But that is not the case, Kemi’s repeated jibes at Nigeria are rather unprovoked and clearly of her own making. Her history of making denigrating remarks about Nigeria goes way back, contrary to what some of those who have endorsed her position think.
It is predictable though that some will seek to ride on her back to project their misgivings about Nigeria, even if not in sync with the matter at hand. But that can still be done without tweaking the facts and context to suit preferred narratives. No one has made any demand on Kemi Badenoch to do anything for Nigeria. No one has asked her to speak up for Nigeria or be “Nigeria’s PR agent”. If anything, I see her, at the moment, as more of a PR liability than an asset.
Those who have pushed back against throwing Nigeria under the bus for the sake of a political career have not placed any demand on Kemi. Rather, they have simply expressed their desire for her to comport herself, speak to the issues before her, stay in her lane, and stop making detours to force Nigeria onto the threshing floor. Many find her penchant for latching on to Nigeria as a prop to further her agenda weird.
Her recollection of life in Nigeria is not in tune with what many of us remember of that period. She remembers having to carry chairs to school, but that would be strange if that was at the same International School, Lagos on the University of Lagos campus. I was a student at Unilag at that time, and I don’t remember seeing students at ISL carrying chairs from home to school. She must be better informed though, as her recollection of school life in her 2018 interview, is quite vivid. “Mostly it meant getting up at 5 am and cutting grass endlessly. Everyone had their own machete. Because that’s how you cut grass in Africa. There were no lawnmowers. We had to tend our own patches. I still feel as if I have got the blisters.”
This account might be disputed by her schoolmates, who have expressed shock and embarrassment at her story, but it is her recollection, and we just have to let that be, even if it includes that of “fetching water in heavy, rusty buckets from a borehole a mile away.” It might be difficult to understand how she could have ‘experienced poverty’, even as a middle-class girl, with a medical doctor father and a mother who was a Professor at Unilag, while at the same time embarking on frequent travels abroad for holidays, as she said; but it is her story. It might not jell, but it is her story. It can also be that having already given this account way back, she has elected to stand by it, even adding further chapters to make it more colourful. Who knows though?
Putting the different stories about her life in Nigeria side-by-side with her views on issues confronting the black community in Britain, one is better able to appreciate this “British patriot”, whose heroes are Winston Churchill, Airey Neave (the war hero turned-politician who was murdered in a car-bomb attack by the Irish National Liberation Army in 1979), and Margaret Thatcher. It helps one to understand her pro-Brexit stance and her argument that “the vote for Brexit is the greatest-ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom.” Her credentials are indeed eloquent: “She is anti-woke, supports stop and search, wants NHS reform, defends Britain’s record on race relations, praises the police, opposes children being taught that white privilege is a fact, and has said there were “good things” that happened under the British Empire, as well as bad ones.”
She has taken time to build her profile. A UK-based “website for the people of the African diaspora” in a 2021 report details a list of statements by Kemi Badenoch, in which her positions were deemed controversial by the black community. Here are some:
July 2020, Badenoch controversially blamed Ms. Agyepong’s family of a 12-year-old boy arrested over a toy gun for “inflaming tensions” about police behaviour.
In an interview with the Radio 4 “Today” programme, she wrongly claimed that the officers had been unarmed during the incident: “I don’t think we should be using this sort of language where people feel unarmed police officers try to kill people on the streets. We’re hearing a lot of this rhetoric that is simply not true. We should not be trying to inflame tensions in this way by talking about police killing people when this is certainly not true.”
October 2020, in response to Labour MP Dawn Butler, who had told the Commons that black children are made to feel inferior by what they are taught in school, arguing that, “History needs to be decolonised. You can go through (the) whole of the GCSE and not have reference to any Black authors at all. You could go through history and not understand the richness of Africa and the Caribbean, you can go through history and not understand all the leaders in the Black community.”
But Badenoch rejected the claims, insisting that history in schools “is not colonised”, making controversial claims on critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, black history, decolonising the curriculum, and the issue of ‘white privilege’.
She later got into another controversy with Reni Eddo-Lodge, the bestselling author of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. Then with Nadine White of the Huffington Post (UK). Badenoch was faced with criticism after publicly accusing a journalist of “making up claims” and creating disinformation for asking questions about a video campaign promoting the coronavirus vaccine programme. “In a Twitter thread, she accused the journalist of “creepy and bizarre” behaviour, and published screenshots of questions sent to her MP’s office and to a ministerial press office, naming the reporter, which prompted Labour MP Dawn Butler, in a tweet to Badenoch, to allege that the minister’s actions had “subjected” the journalist to vile abuse.”
Badenoch also criticised the BBC’s community affairs correspondent, Rianna Croxford, after she reported that a black doctor had been sidelined from leading the PHE review into coronavirus risk factors. The BBC however stood by this story. She had also controversially claimed that a reluctance to be vaccinated amongst “ethnic minorities” was in part due to attitudes that they had brought from their home countries.
On the issue of historic medical racism, Badenoch disputed this as an issue in the UK. To her, “… people often talk about things in the US, there’s one specific example about Pfizer in Nigeria – which we don’t find here.” She goes further, “I’m also very conscious about propagating a line that the NHS is racist, which is fundamentally what this is about. The medical racism that they are talking about is often to do with people interpreting the way that they’re being treated as not being culturally sensitive…”
Indeed, there is enough out there to suggest where Kemi Badenoch stands on the issues on the minds of many in the black community. It becomes easier to understand what she is doing, and where she is going with what she is doing, once her outlook is placed in the proper context. Her eyes are trained on much more than what ails Nigeria. Nigeria only happens to be a doormat on her journey, one to bring in when faced with inconvenient truths. That is the only way to explain her bringing in the story of carrying a machete to school every day while in Nigeria into a conversation about the knife and gang culture in Britain. It was about fabricating context for one to enable her to deflect and misplace the context of the other. People are indeed more worried about how this reflects on her than they are about what it does for Nigeria, which is only collateral damage. This is more about her than anything else.
Her’s is a carefully curated identity for proper positioning in the minds of her target audience. She is not just about making outlandish claims, courting controversies, and saying some of these strange things that make some journalists refer to her as gaffe-prone; it is in furtherance of an agenda. Her’s is a deliberate and systematic stoking of fire, and playing on the very edge of the pitch to a dance that the world is becoming too familiar with. Nigeria just happens to be a cannon fodder. Alternative facts have since become mainstream weapons for political engagement. Politicians will rather double down than backtrack, except when they have their backs to the wall. This playbook has worked elsewhere, and will likely work for her too. The alternative facts might be unprovoked and even outrageous, but they are so on purpose. The essence is to shock, provoke, and alienate, which is what buys loyalty from ‘those who matter.’
Her point is this: “I come from a thoroughly broken, dysfunctional society to this great country that has worked for me, and for this, I am grateful. We must not let outsiders mess up this place with ways of life that are contrary to the culture here. I stand as the representation of the ‘British dream’, a first-generation immigrant that has risen from the base of the ladder to the top in less than two decades, and I am ready to lay down my life for this country to keep what we have going.”
Kemi Badenoch is not Anthony Joshua. She is not Ashleigh Plumptre. She is not Ademola Lookman. She is no longer Kemi Adegoke. She is Kemi Badenoch now. She wants to be the next Prime Minister of Britain. She is on a mission. She is on her way to achieving her dream. Nothing else matters. We just have to wish her well and let her go. Who knows if, and when, she might yet return?
Simbo Olorunfemi works for Hoofbeatdotcom, a Nigerian communications consultancy and publisher of Africa Enterprise. Email: Editor@enterpriseafrica.ng
