Kemi Badenoch, Leader of the Conservative Party, has said, she has not renewed her passport since the early 2000s, and no longer identifies as Nigerian.
Born in the United Kingdom (UK), Badenoch grew up in both Nigeria and the United States (US), and then, returned to England at the age of sixteen (16) due to Nigeria’s worsening political and economic climate, as well as to continue her education.
Badenoch, speaking on former MP and television presenter Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast, said, she was “Nigerian through ancestry” but “by identity, I’m not really”.
In 2024, Nigeria’s Vice President, Kashim Shettima, criticized Kemi Badenoch after she “denigrated” the West African country.
On the podcast, Badenoch 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.”
On her passport renewal, she said: “I don’t identify with it anymore. Most of my life has been in the UK and I’ve just never felt the need to.”
Badenoch continued: “I’m Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there because of my parents… but by identity, I’m not really.”
She narrated, as a child, “I remember never quite feeling that I belonged there”, she went on, adding that she recalled “coming back to the UK in 1996 thinking: this is home”.
The Opposition Leader added the reason she returned to the England was “a very sad one”.
“It was that my parents thought: ‘There is no future for you in this country’.”
