\n<\/p>\n
\u200bKemi Badenoch has said she no longer considers herself Nigerian and does not possess a Nigerian passport.<\/p>\n
The Conservative party leader, who was born in London, but grew up in Nigeria and the US and did not return to the UK until she was 16, said she had not renewed her Nigerian passport in two decades.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Rosebud podcast, Badenoch said: \u201cI\u2019m Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there because of my parents, but by identity I\u2019m not really. I know the country very well, I have a lot of family there, and I\u2019m very interested in what happens there.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut home is where my now family is, and my now family is my children, it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1980 Badenoch was among the last people to automatically receive British citizenship because she was born in the UK. Margaret Thatcher abolished birthright citizenship the following year.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinding out that I did have that British citizenship was a marvel to so many of my contemporaries, so many of my peers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the reason that I came back here was actually a very sad one, and it was that my parents thought: \u2018There is no future for you in this country.\u2019\u201d She recalled \u201cnever quite feeling that I belonged there\u201d.<\/p>\n
The future Tory leader moved back to the UK aged 16 to live with a friend of her mother because of the worsening political and economic situation in Nigeria, and to study for her A-levels.<\/p>\n
When Badenoch\u2019s father, Femi Adegoke, who was a doctor, died in Nigeria in 2022 she obtained a visa to travel there, which she described as a \u201cbig fandango\u201d.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n
Get the day\u2019s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning<\/p>\n
Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n She has on occasion clashed with the Nigerian government. Last year the country\u2019s vice-president, Kashim Shettima, suggested she could \u201cremove the Kemi from her name\u201d if she was not proud of her \u201cnation of origin\u201d.<\/p>\n It is unclear what promoted Shettima\u2019s remarks but Badenoch has frequently spoken about corruption in Nigeria and growing up with a sense of fear and insecurity.<\/p>\n The Tory leader told the podcast she had not experienced racial prejudice in Britain \u201cin any meaningful form\u201d. \u201cI knew I was going to a place where I would look different to everybody, and I didn\u2019t think that that was odd,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I found actually quite interesting was that people didn\u2019t treat me differently, and it\u2019s why I\u2019m so quick to defend the UK whenever there are accusations of racism.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u200bKemi Badenoch has said she no longer considers herself Nigerian and does not possess a Nigerian passport. The Conservative party leader, who was born in London, but grew up in Nigeria and the US and did not return to the UK until she was 16, said she had not renewed her Nigerian passport in two<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[3494,3547,333,946,7194,7195],"class_list":{"0":"post-13520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-badenoch","9":"tag-kemi","10":"tag-longer","11":"tag-nigerian","12":"tag-sees","13":"tag-upbringing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}