Amid celebrations of Kemi Badenoch’s first day on floor of the United Kingdom (UK) parliament after emerging as Conservative Party leader, the Federal Government has alleged that the lawmaker declined requests for meetings on the need to identify with her Nigerian roots.
It said that requests were sent during the newly elected Conservative Party leader’s tenure as a Secretary of State for Business and Trade under the former Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak.
The Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) Abike Dabiri-Erewa, who disclosed this on Wednesday, stressed that the Federal Government will not force anyone including Badenoch to identify with their Nigerian roots.
Dabiri-Erewa, whose office oversees the activities of Nigerians living abroad, disclosed that her office has reached out to Badenoch a few times and got no response from the lawmaker.
“It depends on if she identifies the Nigerianess in her. We have reached out to her once or twice without any response, so we don’t force people to accept to be Nigerian,” Dabiri-Erewa said on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief programme on Wednesday when asked if the government has identified with Badenoch.
“If you appreciate the Nigerianess in you and you want to work with us, we are open to everybody, but we cannot force you to appreciate the Nigerianess in you. You remember the Miss Universe Nigeria in South Africa.
“Until she got into a little problem with South Africa she identified with Nigeria, and she identified with Nigeria, came to Nigeria and we hosted her. As long as that blood is in you, you are a Nigerian.
“So, it depends on Kemi to decide whether appreciates the Nigerianess in her, whether she wants to work with Nigeria, but we cannot force anybody.”
This came four days after the Conservatives elected Badenoch as its new leader, replacing Rishi Sunak, who quit after the party’s disastrous showing in the July general election.
Badenoch, 44, came out top in the two-horse race with former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, winning 57 percent of party members’ votes.
The lawmaker, who became the first black leader of a UK-wide political party, said it was an “enormous honour” to assume the role, but that “the task that stands before us is tough.”
“We have to be honest about the fact we made mistakes” and “let standards slip. It is time to get down to business, it is time to renew,” she added.
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.
