Opeyemi Olamilekan
United Kingdom’s Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has renewed her onslaught against Nigeria.
Badenoch, 44, dominated the headlines towards the end of 2024 over controversial remarks about Nigeria.
While delivering her first speech of the year 2025 at an event organised by Onward, a British think tank producing research on economic and social issues, Badenoch said she did not want Britain to be like Nigeria.
She highlighted the importance of building trust, saying the Conservative Party is the right group to fix Britain.
Badenoch said the UK could become like Nigeria if the system is not reformed.
“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,” she said.
“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.”
Kemi Badenoch became the Conservatives’ new leader and the first Black woman to a head a major British political party on Saturday, after winning a leadership contest on a promise to return the party to its founding principles.
Badenoch replaced former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and has pledged to lead the party through a period of renewal after its resounding defeat at Britain’s July election, saying it had veered towards the political centre by “governing from the left”.
She came out on top in the two-horse race with former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, winning 57 percent of the votes of party members.
Badenoch was born in London in 1980, but spent her childhood living in Lagos, Nigeria, and in the United States, where her mother lectured.
She returned to the UK at the age of 16 to live with a friend of her mother’s due to the deteriorating political and economic situation in Nigeria, which had affected her family.
Follow the KOIKIMEDIA NEWS 🗞️ CHANNEL on WhatsApp