UK Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, says she no longer considers herself Nigerian and does not hold a Nigerian passport.
Badenoch admitted that although her ancestry is Nigerian and she spent part of her upbringing in the country, she does not identify as Nigerian.
“I’m Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there because of my parents, but by identity, I’m not really.
“I know the country very well, I have a lot of family there, and I’m very interested in what happens there,” Badenoch said on the Rosebud podcast hosted by Gyles Brandreth.
Born in Wimbledon, London, in 1980, the politician said that she had not renewed her Nigerian passport in over two decades.
Badenoch spent a significant part of her childhood in Nigeria and the United States before returning to the UK at the age of 16.
“I know the country [Nigeria] very well, I have a lot of family there, and I’m very interested in what happens there,” she stated.
Despite her roots, she emphasised a personal sense of detachment from the West African country.
Reflecting on her early struggles, she recalled, “The toughest thing I had to do was to fend for myself at 18.”
She also shared her feelings of not fully belonging while living in Nigeria, saying, “Never quite feeling that I belonged there.”
Now firmly rooted in the UK, Badenoch described what “home” means to her.
She said, “But home is where my now family is, and my now family is my children, it’s 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.”
Badenoch is among the last group of people to receive British birthright citizenship before the policy was abolished in 1981 by Margaret Thatcher’s government.
Speaking on her citizenship status, she added: “Finding out that I did have that British citizenship was a marvel to so many of my contemporaries, so many of my peers.”
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