Kemi Badenoch -I don’t see myself as Nigerian by identity

British Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has revealed that she no longer identifies as Nigerian and has not held a passport for the country where she grew up in two decades.

In an interview with the Rosebud podcast, Badenoch, who was born in the UK but raised in Nigeria, opened up about her identity and how her early experiences shaped her political outlook.

“I have not renewed my Nigerian passport, I think, not since the early 2000s,” Badenoch said. She explained her stance on her identity by adding, “I don’t identify with it any more, most of my life has been in the UK and I’ve just never felt the need to”. While she acknowledged her heritage, stating, “I’m Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there because of my parents… but by identity I’m not really,” she noted that her sense of “home is where my now family is, and my now family is my children, it’s my husband and my brother and his children, in-laws. The Conservative party is very much part of my family – my extended family, I call it,”.

The North West Essex MP explained that her parents sent her back to the UK at the age of 16 in the 1990s, a decision she described as “a very sad one”.

She recalled their thinking: “It was that my parents thought: ‘There is no future for you in this country’”.

Badenoch said her early experiences in Nigeria were formative, shaping her political views, including “why I don’t like socialism”.

She added, “I remember never quite feeling that I belonged there”.

The Conservative leader also addressed her experience with race in Britain, saying she has not experienced racial prejudice “in any meaningful form”.

She noted, “I knew I was going to a place where I would look different to everybody, and I didn’t think that that was odd,” adding that her experience is why she is so quick to defend the UK. “What I found actually quite interesting was that people didn’t treat me differently, and it’s why I’m so quick to defend the UK whenever there are accusations of racism,” she said.