*Photo:Kemi Badenoch*
Born in the United Kingdom to Nigerian parents who belong to the Yoruba ethnic group of Southwestern Nigeria, the leader of the Conservative Party, 44-year-old Kemi Badenoch was brought to Nigeria as a child and returned to the UK at the age of sixteen.
Kemi is a controversial figure on account of her devil-may-care speech style. For example, in response to Vice-President Kashim Shettima’s admonition to her to stop denigrating Nigeria, she remarked: “I find it interesting that everybody defines me as being Nigerian. I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity (Yoruba). That’s what I really am. I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, Boko Haram area, where the Islamism is. Those were our ethnic enemies and yet you end up being lumped in with those people.”
Moreover, in the U.K., she was asked by a British interviewer: “Do you trust the British police?” To this question, she replied: “I do. I do. But um, you know, remember my experience with the police in Nigeria was very negative. And coming to the U.K., my first experience with the police was very positive. You know, the police in Nigeria would rob us. … I remember the police stole my brother’s shoes and his watch. … It’s a very poor country, so people do all sorts of things. And giving people a gun is just a license to intimidate. But that is not the bar we should use for the British Police. … When I was burgled, for example, the police were there. They were helpful before they eventually caught the person. This was in 2004, that was 20 years ago.”
A Yoruba idiom would characterise Kemi Badenoch’s off-course response as follows: “À n wírú, ó n wírù.” (We’re talking about irú – locust beans, but she’s talking about ìrù – tails.) In other words, she violates the conversational principle which requires that an answer be sufficiently relevant to its question. Moreover, Kemi’s stereotypically-rosy picture of British police does not accord with British media reports and official government records.
For instance, on 10 July, 2020, Sky News reported as follows: “More than 200 serving police officers in the UK have convictions for criminal offences including assault, burglary, drug possession and animal cruelty.”
Furthermore, Sky News reported on 4 March, 2024: “Dozens of police officers across the UK have been convicted of crimes including rape, sexual assault and sex offences against children in the three years since the murder of Sarah Everard, new data shows. Officers have also been convicted of assault, possession of indecent images, harassment and controlling and coercive behaviour since 3 March 2021 – the day Ms Everard was abducted, a Sky News investigation has found. … Ms Everard was walking home in Clapham, south London, when she was abducted, raped and murdered by then-serving Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens.”
In addition, on 17 June, 2024, The Standard reported: “More than 90 car thefts a day went unsolved in London last year, data revealed on Monday. Since the last election in December 2019, a staggering 106,742 motor vehicles have been stolen in the capital without a culprit being caught, according to statistics released by the Home Office. Some 85 per cent of car theft cases reported to the Metropolitan Police between 2020 and 2023 were closed without a suspect ever being identified. Last year just 480 car thefts were solved by the force – just over one per cent of all cases.”
These cases of unresolved motor vehicle thefts and the other police crimes outlined above belie Kemi Badenoch’s rosy picture of British police. This proves that, as a Yoruba proverb says, “Oníkálukú, abitielára.” (‘To each their own.’). It also validates the Yoruba proverb, “Ìpàkó-onípàkó làá rí; eni eléni ní rí teni.” (‘It’s the back of the head of others that we see, and it’s others who see the back of our own heads.’)
With respect to corruption, Independent (UK), on 11 December, 2024, reported on Badenoch: “During her unsuccessful bid to lead the Tory party in 2022 she said: ‘I grew up in Nigeria and I saw first-hand what happens when politicians are in it for themselves, when they use public money as their private piggy banks, when they promise the earth and pollute not just the air but the whole political atmosphere with their failure to serve others.’”
As with ignoring British police crimes, these views illustrate the Yoruba idiom “Arítenimòówí, a f’’àpáàdì rìgìdì bo tiè m’ólè.” (‘One who sees the mote in other peoples’ eyes, but doesn’t see the log in hers.’) This is a veritable propaganda technique which magnifies the negative aspects of a person’s object of hate and suppresses the negative aspects of their object of admiration. This point would become clearer in the next paragraph.
According to a 13 June, 2024 report by Simon Kuper in Financial Times, titled “How the wrong chaps took charge of British politics,” “The Good Chaps’ codes forbade stealing. Britain in their era aimed to deter corruption with unspoken guidelines, rather than with vulgar written rules. From the 1990s, Good Chaps began dying out. As memories of wars gave way to Thatcherite wealth-worship, the idea of public service came to seem a bit silly.” Moreover, a 1 December, 2024 report by Transparency International UK said: “the most comprehensive analysis of suspect funds in UK politics to date, finds that millions of pounds donated to political parties and their members have come from unknown or questionable sources, including those who have been accused or found to have bought political access or involved in criminality.”
Kemi has also been reported to have said “I don’t care about colonialism,” and that “UK’s wealth is not based on White privilege and colonialism.” She would not have said this if she had asked her puppeteers about British-Iranian history of the late 1940s to early 1950s which was marked by Iranian resistance to the continuation of the age-long British appropriation of Iranian oil to build British wealth. The heroic Iranian resistance is marked by the turbulent relations between Iran and the West which persist till today.
If Badenoch truly does not know that British wealth remarkably derives from colonialism, she should be an intensely ignorant and arrogant person; but if she knows that and yet denies the fact, she would be a thoroughly dishonest and highly mischievous person.
In an 8 May, 2024 article titled, “Why is Kemi Badenoch denying Britain’s colonialism helped its economic growth?”, in the UK’s The Voice Online, Richard Sudan, noted: “Britain had an empire and the reality is that virtually nothing in Britain would be what it is today without the role of slavery and colonialism. … Kemi Badenoch knows this, but is less concerned with truth and is focused on her own political ambitions.” According to Richard Sudan, Badenoch’s kind of stand is “a gift to all those opposing reparations, a campaign that has been gaining traction in recent years.”
In doing the hatchet job for the White establishment, to get or sustain tokenist benefits, Kemi has been validating the British slang ‘coconut’ or its American equivalent ‘house negro’. According to a Tuesday, 29 June, 2010 article by Nuala McGovern titled “Is the term ‘coconut’ racist?”, in the World Have Your Say Blog, hosted by BBC News, “The term coconut, has been used to accuse someone of betraying their race, or culture, by implying that, like a coconut, they are brown on the outside but white on the inside. Similar racial terms to denote ‘acting white’ while from another ethnic group include ‘bounty bar’, ‘oreo’ and ‘banana’.”
The concepts of ‘coconut’ and ‘house negro’ are related to the Yoruba idea of àserílégbé which literally means ‘obsequious conduct that is aimed at getting a person a place in the house or keeping them there’, and idiomatically means ‘obsequious behaviour aimed at achieving social acceptability and sustaining privilege.’ When Kemi Badenoch’s behaviour is thus described as àserílégbé, it is implied that she suffers from very deep low self-esteem and social insecurity, and she denigrates Nigeria in order to fill the psychological void and get herself relief. In fact, reminiscent of the English proverb “There is no zeal like that of a convert,” Kemi is reported to have zealously said: “I am here to protect [the crown] and I will die protecting this country because I know what’s out there.”
Asked by a BBC journalist in a “Newsnight” interview posted on 30 September, 2024, “Are you too gaffe prone?”, she replied: “I’ve never had a gaffe. I’m a good communicator.” She was further asked by the interviewer: “Are you too gaffe prone to become leader, to become Prime Minister?”; and Kemi replied: “I’ve never had a gaffe. The truth is not gaffes.” The BBC journalists’ question seems to cohere with the Yoruba proverb which says, “Twenty year old pounded yam can still burn the fingers.” (‘Iyán ogún odún a maa jó’ni lówó.’).
Moreover, a Yoruba idiom which describes what appears to be Kemi’s heightened delusion or warped sense of self-perception or self-assessment is “Eni tí à n wò ní àwòsukún tí ó n wo ara rè ní àwòrérín.” (‘A person we are looking at tearily, but who is looking at themselves with mirth.’)
Asked about the comments, Badenoch’s spokesperson said, as reported by Sky News on 11 December, 2024, she “stands by what she says” and “is not the PR for Nigeria. … She tells the truth. She tells it like it is. She is not going to couch her words.” This may make her “Elétí ikún.” (‘A squirrel-eared person who can’t, won’t or doesn’t listen to good counsel.’) This idiom alludes to ikún – a kind of squirrel that is hard of hearing or deaf. It also calls to mind the Yoruba proverb, “Kàkà kó dè lára ewé àgbon, kokoko ló n le sii.” (‘Rather than softening, palm frond leaf hardens.’) This makes her, in Yoruba idiomatic language, “Elénu razor” (‘A razor-sharp-tongued person’) or even “Elénu oró” (‘A poison-tongued person.’) Unbending dispositions like Kemi’s recall the Yoruba idiom “Gun esin ayán.” (‘Mount a cockroach-sized horse.’) Delusional horses of that kind usually don’t carry anybody far.
Looking at the range of opinions about her within and outside the UK, the Conservative Party leader has acquired the image of an obsequious Kemi, ignorant Kemi, arrogant Kemi, dishonest Kemi, hypocritical Kemi, and intransigent Kemi. She seems to have in her personality all of the ingredients for the making of a tragic hero – a character with immensely astounding attributes which are undermined by equally fundamental flaws.
Kemi Badenoch’s indiscretions and her rise within the British political hierarchy, all the same, may just be what is needed to sensitise Africans anew to rolling back, in significant ways, insidious neo-colonialism on the continent.