What Kemi Badenoch should mean to Nigerians by Tunde Akande

What Kemi shows to Nigeria is that there are many of her type in the south and in the north of Nigeria.

Kemi Badenoch, is not known to Nigerians until recently when she began to make waves in British politics. She contested in the Conservative party to be prime minister of Britain. She did not win her party's nomination. But recently when her political party, the Conservative Party lost the general elections, she won a keenly contested election to pilot the affairs of the Conservatives as the opposition party in the British House of Commons. Then the popularity of Kemi Badenoch soared.

Who is this 44 year old black woman elected to head the Conservative Party of the country that had enslaved her own country for years before she granted her independence in 1960? Nigera is the original country of Kemi Badenoch and her parents. She and her father were from Ibadan, the capital city of Oyo state and the political capital of the Yoruba, an ethnicity in Nigeria. Kemi's father, late Femi Adegoke attended Ibadan Grammar School, a school founded by the Anglican Church whose first principal was late Chief Alexander Babatunde Akinyele, first Nigerian graduate of the University of Ibadan. Akinyele was a disciplinarian committed to the advancement of education. He built a great school, got committed personally to his students inspiring them to reach for the sky through hardwork and merit. Femi Adegoke was one of the students of the school. He was nicknamed ‘Fariga’ by his colleagues. ‘Fariga’ is a person who is stern and will not easily capitulate. Ibadan Grammar School is now a ghost of itself in the hands of the Oyo state government who forcefully took it over from the missionary founder and progressively ruined it among many other similarly good schools formerly run excellently by the missionaries. Perhaps Femi told his daughter, Kemi the story of Ibadan Grammar School and Kemi resolved never to have anything to do with Nigeria.

While Femi Adegoke hailed from Ibadan, the mother of Kemi Badenoch, Feyi Adegoke is from Lagos. She is a Professor of Physiology. An opinion said she probably worked at the University of Lagos Teaching Hospital, LUTH. Femi Adegoke was a general practitioner who had a clinic, Iwosan Clinic in downtown Itire, near Lawanson in Lagos. Kemi according to a WhatsApp post attended the International School, University of Lagos. It was probably while living with her parents perhaps in the Itire/Lawanson axis that Kemi Badenoch had experience with fetching water from 'one mile away' from home that she discussed recently and using rust steel bucket to draw water from the well.

Kemi Badenoch must have gone back to Britian to have her degree in computer systems engineering at the Sussex University after completing her education at the International School, University of Lagos. After a brief work experience in Britain, Kemi joined British politics and became a member of parliament. Her rise was meteoric with all and sundry noticing her talent as an outspoken and cerebral young mother of three children who are kept away from the limelight for privacy reasons. Kemi met her husband, a white man in the cause of her political activities. It was not love at first sight as she said but it was love that grew and still growing. Nobody has any details on the marriage ceremony but some are trying to link Kemi's choice of husband from among the whites as something that was deliberately planned. Her disdain for the failing Nigerian system may have informed her choice. She said recently that she did not want Britian to become like the country she ran away from. Which means her running from Nigeria was deliberate. And with her sordid experience in Nigeria in her mind, she will fight tooth and nail to keep her new home country from regressing to the condition of the Nigerian state.

Kemi is audacious. In her campaign she described Britian as broken and that it must be built and she has the capacity to build the U.K because as a computer systems engineer she's trained to build. All that had been ruling Britian since the last three prime minsters were good and hardworking but they failed because they were working within a broken system. If the broken system is not fixed no hardwork will make Britain work. Coming from Kemi Badenoch with a Nigerian root, that statement has no equal in audacity. Various white prime ministers with their British roots tried and failed but Kemi said she has detected the fault and she’s capable of rebuilding Britian. Britain at the height of her power and glory ruled half of the world including the heritage root of Kemi, Nigeria. Obviously for the mostly racist British citizens to have voted for Kemi can only mean they saw something in her to believe she can do what she has promised, that is, to fix a broken Britain.

Kemi attributes all the credit to her current status and personal success to her father, Femi Adegoke who is a full-blooded Nigerian. "My father is my hero," she told an interviewer. She said her father told her she is inspirational. The death of her father to brain tumor in 2022 was like a tonic she needed to rise up to her potential. Nothing like that ever shocked her, she missed her father most terribly but she decided to rise to conquer in British politics, she decided to help fix the broken British system. If Britian is broken, Nigeria is shattered. But who will fix Nigeria? Kemi won't because she is not giving Nigeria even a wink. Efforts by the Nigerian authorities to draw the attention of the Nigerian girl that has won the heart of Britain has attracted no attention from Kemi. "We sought to reach her three times but she spurned us," reported Abike Dabiri, Chairman of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, a report which has drawn equally vitriolic comments from many angry Nigerians.

One of these commentators whose words were very acerbic was Femi Fani- Kayode, also a young man who was trained by a rich politician father, Remi Fani-Kayode, a one time deputy premier of the former Western Region. Femi Fani-Kayode attended the best of the British schools. If words could kill, Femi Fani-Kayode’s diatribe could have sent Kemi to the grave. Some Nigerians have also risen to the defence of Kemi. What Kemi shows to Nigeria is that there are many of her type in the south and in the north of Nigeria. If Nigeria will create the system that produced Kemi, a system that gives equal opportunity to all entrants and that allow merit to determine the outcome, many Kemis will arise in Nigeria. If Kemi were in Nigeria she will probably rot away in one cornershop somewhere in Lawanson, Lagos with nobody ready to buy her fertile ideas. She will need somebody in Abuja to push her through. I know a friend with a very fantastic software he developed which can help the police to make their job easy, interesting and efficient but because he has nobody in high places, for over thirty years he was not able to get the attention of the police. I don't know the status of the friend now, I only hope he has not died with his fertile ideas. His case was probably made worse because he is Igbo and you know nobody wants to listen to that stock here.

Why does Kemi not love Nigeria? She knows there is no Nigeria yet. Majority of politicians who get to power either at the presidency, the governorship or the local government levels go there to steal and not to do any serious thinking. The more stupid they are the more qualified they are to be leaders in Nigeria. No Kemi Badenoch will show up in that system. Only God knows how many millions of Kemi Badenochs have been wasted in this country. Kemi Badenoch will not give Nigeria a wink, she is so scared of us, she does not want to be labeled a thief like our leaders, she does not want to be seen as a wrecker like some of us are, she does not want to be seen a scammer as some of our leaders are. No leader apart from General Yakubu Gowon, former head of state has impressed the British as a gentleman. So Badenoch has to keep us at a comfortable distance so we don't affect her rising profile and torpedo her ambitions.

But we must allow her rejection of us to teach us lessons in good leadership and good citizenship. She must teach us that our Kemi Badenochs are within our easy reach if we will stop our nepotism; if the types of late President Umaru Yaradua will not be president to reverse all what his predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo achieved because some of his Fulani tribe told him Obasanjo did not favor them, so for this reason his successor Jonathan Goodluck had to start from the scratch, he himself filling every available appointment with his Niger Delta people and the Igbo because he shares the magic name, Azikiwe with the iconic late Igbo politician and if Muhammadu Buhari will not insist that everything must go the way of his Fulani people. Nigeria has many Kemi Badenochs among the almajiris that we leave out in the cold and only hear about when enemies of the state among the power mongers in the north unleash them on the public when they need to push their selfish and murderous agenda.

If Femi Fani-Kayode who poured bromides and invectives on Kemi Badenoch and promises to continue to do so as long as Kemi Badenoch is in the power calculus of Britain, had used half of his training and exposure and opportunities in Britain to display the patriotism and commitment he glibly spoke about in his harsh criticism of Kemi, Nigeria would have been far ahead of Britain and Kemi would not have run away from Nigeria. Rather Femi Fani-Kayode became a frequent guest of the EFCC, Nigeria’s anti-graft agency. Femi Fani-Kayode's diatribe will not remove a jot from Kemi but can only strengthen her resolve the more to build the broken Britain. Rejection can be painful but at the same time it can be used to a positive effect if the rejected will do his introspection and decide to work hard to overcome the rejection. If Fani-Kayode will join other meaningful Nigerians who are desirous to build a Nigeria where all citizens are truly equal, where merit and not tribe or family connections decide outcomes, Kemi Badenoch will very soon run back to Nigeria and love her roots.

First Published in METRO

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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.