When the UK’s Conservative Party initiated a leadership contest in July to replace former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, I followed the event keenly to see who would finally emerge as leader. Sunak’s party had lost the national election to the opposition Labour Party and as the convention demands in the UK, the leader would step down to give room to a fresh hand. Even though Kemi Badenoch, a member of parliament and a cabinet minister with an unmistakably Nigerian name was mentioned as a contestant, I did not give her half the chance. Not even the British media foresaw a Kemi win.
The front runner was James Cleverly, erstwhile Minister of Interior, who also was the Minister of Foreign Affairs during the 50-day tenure of Prime Minister Liz Truss in 2022. Voting to elect the leader was by all the Conservative MPs through secret balloting online. It was a three-month-long affair eliminating laggers on the route until only two stood. Surprisingly Kemi was one of the two. I watched the final and was taken aback when she was called the winner. The expressions of joy I saw on the faces of the MPs as well as the hugs and backslappings among them signified genuine support for her.
For me, onlooking from this far, it was a moment of joy to see how the British society has made rapid progress from its racist past. Rishi Sunak, the party leader handing over to Kemi, is the son of an Indian couple who had migrated to Britain from East Africa in the 1970s. Kemi Badenoch (nee Adegoke) herself is of Nigerian parentage born in London in 1980. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, during Prime Minister Liz Truss in 2022 is also of Ghanaian parentage.
Clearly, then advances have been made in race relations in the UK since the 1980s. However, many who have known the British society of earlier years with its ingrained racism would not have given a thought to a woman of colour superintending over the Conservative Party. I went to the UK in 1979 as a post-graduate student and by then overt racism had more or less been discarded, but there were traces here and there.
I lived in Swansea and for most of the period could not rent a suitable flat even though I could afford it. I was newly married and needed to bring my wife over. The accommodation offered by the university was a bedsitter which was not suitable for a couple. I had to scout for an alternative. Whenever I found an empty flat in the evening newspaper and phoned the owner, I would be assured of taking occupancy. However, as soon as I showed up to clinch the deal, the landlord seeing my face would wring his hand and shake his head telling me that the flat had just been taken.
Kemi was born in the UK at about that period when the country was undergoing rapid changes. Britain had downloaded most of its colonial baggage overseas and was then contending with internal cleavages. The Irish, Welsh and Scots were all bristling for independence from what they perceived as internal colonialism by the English. The first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was in office gearing to remake the country in her image. Kemi spent most of her childhood in Lagos where her parents had moved back to after her birth. Kemi returned to the UK in the mid-90s when she was in her mid-teens to study. Having dual citizenship, she remained permanently in the UK.
Since rising to become the leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi’s achievement has received a rather dubious reception from the land of her parents. She’s reputed to have disparaged the country on many public occasions. In one of the most infamous lines attributed to her during the leadership campaign, she was quoted to have said, ‘This is my country. I don’t want it to become like the place I ran away from. I want it to get better and better not just for me, but for the next generation.’ Kemi has also refused attempts by our high government officials to reach out to her.
This is all neither here nor there. We have to understand that Kemi grew up in Lagos in the period when the country was divided. Her father Dr Olufemi Adegoke was a well-known Yoruba irredentist, who spearheaded the Pan-Yoruba Intelligentsia Group, Voice of Reason (VOR) and must have been involved in the upheavals. Kemi left the country in 1996 when the dark clouds were still on the horizon. I guess her utterances are the reflections of that period of her upbringing. We must not hold her to it. If we are to hold people to their foul utterances against their country of birth many of those holding high offices in the country now would be out of job.
From my perspective, we should celebrate Kemi’s feat of breaking the ice ceiling of becoming the first woman of colour to become the leader of a major political party in the UK at the young age of 44. I watched her during her first Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQ) and was greatly impressed with how she stood up to Keir Starmer in the best tradition of the Opposition Leader.
She can’t escape being a Nigerian. She’s an Adegoke with roots in Ondo.
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