Badenoch’s attacks on Nigeria are of no consequence – Presidency

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The presidency and the UK Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, are once again at each other’s throat over an unsavoury comment the latter allegedly made about her homeland.

The Nigerian-born party leader had in her recent speech expressed concerns about the potential impact of ineffective governance in the United Kingdom, drawing a comparison to Nigeria.

Speaking last Thursday, January 16, 2025 at an event hosted by Onward, a British think tank focused on economic and social research, the Tory leader stated the importance of building trust and positioning the Conservative Party as the solution to Britain’s challenges and warned Badenoch warned about the risks of Britain’s system faltering, likening it to Nigeria’s governance issues.

“And why does this matter so much to me? It’s because I know what it is like to have something and then to lose it

“I don’t want Britain to lose what it has.

“I grew up in a poor country and watched my relatively wealthy family become poorer and poorer, despite working harder and harder as their money disappeared with inflation.

“I came back to the UK aged 16 with my father’s last £100 in the hope of a better life.

“So I have lived with the consequences of terrible governments that destroy lives, and I never, ever want it to happen here,” she remarked.

In response to Badenoch’s comments, the spokesman for the president on policy communications, Mr Daniel Bwala, said Badenoch’s remarks have no effect on Nigeria’s international relations or efforts to attract investors.

Bwala who spoke on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Monday said: “I don’t think it would have an effect because she’s not the government in power.

“Usually, these international relationships or collaborations are dealings between governments. Because she’s not the government in power, it will not have any effect.

“Secondly, because she’s a Nigerian, investors will be smart enough to access what she’s saying, whether it is born out of rhetoric.”

He had earlier acknowledged Badenoch’s achievements in the UK, but argued that she was capitalising on populism that thrives on public discontent.

“The only problem we have with Kemi, I think, is the rhetoric because Kemi belongs to the right base in the United Kingdom, which is what you see in this populism around the world; that you can deepen on your support system if you can feed off of the anger of the people.

“And so she’s building a rhetoric of denigrating Nigeria, demarketing in Nigeria, so she can probably win the acceptance or acceptation of the rights in her party. And that to me is counterproductive because if you look at Rishi Sunak, he is also of Indian origin.

“There has been this issue of gang rape in India. He has never used that as a weapon to promote what he believed to be a departure from what is likely to be believed as hereditary or history of the Indian people, but she has always denigrated Nigeria.”