Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, has said she no longer considers herself Nigerian and has not held a Nigerian passport in over two decades.
Speaking on the Rosebud podcast hosted by Gyles Brandreth, Badenoch said that while her ancestry is Nigerian and she spent part of her childhood in the country, she does not identify with the nationality.
“I am Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there because of my parents, but by identity I am not really,” she said.
Badenoch was born in London in 1980 and lived in both Nigeria and the United States before moving back to the UK at the age of 16. She explained that although she knows Nigeria well and maintains strong family connections there, she has always felt somewhat out of place.
“Never quite feeling that I belonged there,” she recalled. “I know the country very well. I have a lot of family there and I am very interested in what happens there.”
The minister also revealed that she has not renewed her Nigerian passport since the early 2000s.
Badenoch is among the last group of people to automatically receive British citizenship by birth before the policy was changed in 1981 under Margaret Thatcher’s government.
Reflecting on her early adult years, she said one of her biggest challenges was learning to fend for herself at 18.
When asked what home means to her today, she said, “Home is where my now family is. My children, my husband, my brother and his children, in-laws. The Conservative Party is very much part of my family. I call it my extended family.”
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