By Dr. Bisi Olawunmi
Now that the storm over Kemi Badenoch, the British opposition leader of Nigerian descent, is subsiding, it is time to critique the entire episode.
Let me start this critique with Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the one who started the fireworks. According to the story, Abike had reached out to celebrate Kemi, as she usually does with Nigerian Diaspora achievers, on her landmark election to the leadership of the British Conservative Party, but her gesture of goodwill was ignored and not reciprocated. She disclosed this during an interview, which unleashed a lynch mob on Kemi. The question arises: why was it difficult for Abike to make this information public with circumspection, rather than projecting Kemi as slighting and denigrating Nigeria?
I see an ego factor here. Apparently, Abike, a three-term House of Representatives member and CEO of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM), felt miffed that a younger person could show what she must have considered disrespect to her and wanted to get her pound of flesh, hence the negative portrayal of the British politician. That was an error of judgment. Had Abike demonstrated the maturity of her age, she would have tempered her seeming anger, knowing there could be other occasions for interaction, and the subject of her anger might even offer an apology. But her bruised ego and sense of self-importance got in the way. So, 62-year-old Abike Kafayat Dabiri-Erewa, apparently in a vengeful fit, felt she must light a fire under her much younger “aburo” (“sister”), 44-year-old Olukemi Olufunto Badenoch, whom she must have disdained as an effete snob, to teach her a lesson!
The lynch mob was unsparing, and Kemi Badenoch responded in kind, leading to brickbats. The critics denounced her for the alleged denigration of Nigeria, the country of her ancestry. An angry Kemi shot back that she was not interested in identifying with the corruption-ridden Nigerian state, hobbled by Boko Haram insurgency, banditry, and Islamic fanaticism, but rather with her Yoruba ethnic nativity. She would not want to be lumped with people from the northern part of the country, who she said were Yoruba’s ethnic enemies. Her spokesman said she was not inclined to do public relations for Nigeria.
Her unrepentant stand incensed the critics. One of the first to jump into the fray was Femi Fani-Kayode, the ex-Aviation Minister during the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency, who, in his characteristic vitriolic use of language, poured venom on Kemi. He wrote about Kemi in The Nation of December 15, 2024: “She does not want to identify with us, and we do not want to identify with her. She sees us as being corrupt and evil, and we see her as being the devil incarnate and spawn of Satan.” He was not done, describing her as “a mere irritant or the inconsequential object of our contempt and ridicule.”
Strong words. Fani-Kayode, we all know, thrives on inserting himself into every controversy, apparently to retain visibility in the public arena. He is, therefore, often precipitate and intemperate in his interventions to steal the limelight. He takes up an issue and becomes the sympathizer who cries more than the bereaved!
Other emergency Nigerian nationalists waded in. Prof. Ishaq Akintola, Executive Director of Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), became a police apologist, blasting Kemi for projecting the Nigeria Police as corrupt, contending that policemen stealing her brother’s shoes could not justify such generalization. Really, Prof.? This is playing the ostrich, given documented evidence of not only police extortion and brutality but killings from “accidental discharge” and deaths of suspects under police detention.
A most recent example was when rogue policemen, in mid-December 2024, in Kwara State, detained a debtor to a brother of one of their colleagues, and the man ended up dead in police custody. Kehinde Yusuf described Kemi Badenoch as “elenu razor” (a razor-sharp-tongued person) for her outspokenness, pointing out that “with immensely astounding attributes which are undermined by equally fundamental flaws,” she has “the making of a tragic hero.” That is morbid negativism.
Enter the big masquerade into the Kemi-bashing arena—the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Kashim Shettima. The vice president, while performing an official function in connection with migration in Abuja, could not resist the temptation of digressing to join the fray. Displaying an expansive mood, as shown on TVC News, the vice president praised former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as a “very brilliant young man” who was “originally from India,” for not denigrating India.
Wrong, Mr. Vice President. Rishi was born in the UK, but those words “originally from India” implied he was born in India and migrated to the UK. Secondly, unlike Kemi, who lived in Nigeria in her formative years, Rishi never lived in India, so there is no basis for comparison with Kemi’s experience in the country of her ancestry. In fact, Rishi Sunak’s father was born in Kenya of Indian migrants, highlighting his generational distance from India. Describing Rishi as “very brilliant” was also meant as a put-down on Kemi. But pray, what is “very brilliant” about a Prime Minister who led his party to its worst electoral defeat?
