UK Conservative Minister Kemi Badenoch has reiterated that she no longer identifies as Nigerian, despite her ancestry and formative years spent in the country.
Speaking during a recent interview on GB News, shared via TikTok on Tuesday, Badenoch clarified her earlier remarks, stating her identity is fundamentally British and urging fellow politicians to prioritise domestic issues over international concerns.
“Well, I think that the BBC certainly wrote that headline. It wasn’t quite what I said, but it is true. My main identity is as British. That is what I see myself as,” she said.
She added: “Nigeria is a nationality. It’s not an ethnicity. There’s no such language as Nigerian. There are lots of different ethnic groups there.”
Expanding on her position, Badenoch criticised what she described as a trend among some UK politicians to focus on foreign affairs, particularly among Labour MPs.
“I think that as a politician in this country, we need to be very focused on what is happening here, not what’s happening elsewhere,” she said. “If you come to this country, you need to be very focused on making sure that you integrate. And if you’re a politician, you need to be 100% focused on British issues. And that’s basically what I was saying.”
The statement follows her earlier comments made on August 1 during an episode of Rosebud, a podcast hosted by Gyles Brandreth, where she revealed that she hadn’t renewed her Nigerian passport in over 20 years and no longer sees Nigeria as part of her identity.
“I’m Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there because of my parents, but by identity I’m not really,” Badenoch said. “I know the country very well, I have a lot of family there, and I’m very interested in what happens there.”
Born in Wimbledon, London, in 1980, Badenoch spent part of her childhood in Nigeria and the United States before returning to the UK at the age of 16. She is one of the last people to benefit from automatic British citizenship by birth before the law changed under Margaret Thatcher’s administration in 1981.
Badenoch has previously drawn criticism for her candid views on Nigeria, once describing the country as a place “where fear is everywhere.”
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