During an interview with The Free Press, UK’s Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch touched on her experience with police officers in Nigeria, claiming that it was “very negative.”
Per The Cable, Badenoch touched on the topic when she was comparing the Nigeria Police Force to police in the United Kingdom. The 44-year-old British politician, whose maiden name is Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke, was born in the United Kingdom but spent much of her childhood in Lagos, Nigeria. She returned to the United Kingdom at the age of 16.
Though Badenoch did not pinpoint her encounters with the Nigerian police, she said that “giving people a gun is just a license to intimidate.”
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“My experience with the Nigerian police was very negative. However, my experience with the British Police was very positive when I came to the UK,” she added.
“The police in Nigeria will rob us. When people say I have this bad experience with the police because I’m black, I say well… I remember the police stole my brother’s shoes and his watch. It’s a very poor country. People do all sorts of things. So, giving people a gun is just a license to intimidate. But that’s not just the problem.”
Badenoch, however, said her experience with police in the United Kingdom was the opposite. “That is not the bar we should use for the British police. When I was burgled, for example, the police were there,” she said. “They were helpful before they eventually caught the person. This was in 2004… that was 20 years ago.”
As previously reported by Face2Face Africa, Badenoch has been very open about her experiences in Nigeria. She previously claimed that she lived in fear during a period when the West African nation faced security issues and was embroiled in corruption.
Her harsh comments about her country of origin caused the West African nation’s vice president Kashim Shettima to criticize her while delivering a speech about migration on December 9, BBC reported.
Shettima in his speech implied that Badenoch had the right to “remove the Kemi from her name” if she did not want to associate herself with her “nation of origin.”
Badenoch’s spokesman, however, said she “stands by what she says” and “is not the PR for Nigeria” when he was asked about Shettima’s criticism of her.
“She is the leader of the opposition and she is very proud of her leadership of the opposition in this country,” he added. “She tells the truth. She tells it like it is. She is not going to couch her words.”
Shettima in his speech said that they were “proud” of Badenoch “despite her efforts at denigrating the nation of her origin.” “She is entitled to her own opinions; she has even every right to remove the Kemi from her name but that does not underscore the fact that the greatest black nation on earth is the nation called Nigeria,” he added before the audience applauded.
Shettima also made mention of the Conservative Party’s former leader Rishi Sunak, who made history as UK’s first Prime Minister of Indian heritage, BBC reported. Shettima described Sunak as “a brilliant young man” who “never denigrated his nation of ancestry.”
Though the comments Shettima was responding to could not be pin-pointed, Badenoch has occasionally spoken about her childhood experiences in Nigeria. The 44-year-old was born in the United Kingdom but spent most of her childhood in Lagos, Nigeria and the United States.
However, the volatile political and economic climate in Nigeria caused her to go back to the United Kingdom where she furthered her education.
