By Tunde Asaju
I have graduated from being alarmed at the rate at which Kemi Badenough, the aspiring Conservative leader, disparages her motherland, Nigeria, to feeling pity for her. She must be so desperate that if she could, she probably would bleach off her dark skin just to be counted white.
As diaspora Nigerians, we always have cause to express our opinions about wasted potential that have become the hallmark of Nigerian politics to date.
It takes it a notch nigher when one moves from that level of concern to denying one’s natural identity as Kemi constantly does each time she riles the nation. It is pitiable because, being the leader of the opposition, it is the highest benchmark of achievement that Kemi has ever attained in her life, where others are celebrated for loftier landmarks. It is also obvious that it will be the highest she reaches politically. The owners of the party she joined constantly laugh at her uppitiness with the adage – the butterfly thinks itself a bird! In Yorubaland, they will say – ṣàkì ń ṣe bí ọ̀rá, eegun ń ṣe bí ẹran!
Kemi’s constant jibes are, at best, pitiable when there are more notable Nigerians in the diaspora making waves and proudly carrying their green passports, respecting their natural identity.
One of them is Adebayo Ogunlesi, whose conglomerate runs the largest airports in the United Kingdom. Unlike Kemi, several silent achievers owe their rise to fame to the hardships that raised them in the land of notched opportunities. Unlike Kemi, these global achievers do not spend every opportunity dissing their roots. Unlike Kemi, they probably know that a river that denies its source is soon dried up.
When I watched a recent interview of the young star, Ashleigh Plumptre, on a Lagos-based FM station, I wondered if we should mind what Kemi says, either of the Nigeria of her youth or the morass that is exhibited today.
Ashley’s ‘white’ identity or Britishness does not make a Briton say – You speak very good English, where were you raised. As a footballer, she is a current international star who earned her mettle in the pantheon of global icons.
In genealogy, she could afford to be perceived as distant from our country by three solid generations. She could have chosen never to identify with her Nigerian roots. After all, neither she nor her father was born in Nigeria. She did not attend a Government secondary school, which feels like a prison. Indeed, before her stardom, she had never touched Nigerian soil even on holidays. Her father had only been to his homeland a couple of times before she and her teammates became African champions.
Without disparaging Nigeria, she spoke diplomatically about the sacrifices she and her teammates made, as members of the Super Falcons, and to blend into a country that would have treated her as another ‘oyibo’. However, Ashley spoke glowingly about her Nigerian roots and was even amused by the call of proud compatriots asking her to marry ‘from home’.
Ashley was born in England to English parents by every stretch of the definition of naturality. Yet, she thinks that the country of her grandfather’s birth is worth identifying with. She earned her jersey on merit and determination. She worked hard to see her country reach the zenith of its aspiration by winning the African Cup.
She earned her official national honour of Member of the Order of the Niger, MON, through yardwork, thanks to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who got this right at least for once. What has Kemi ever achieved in her life that would make Nigeria feel it has lost a citizen by her not renewing her Nigerian passport – absolutely nothing. Any Jack or Jill could become Britain’s leader of the opposition. The late Chief I. K. Dairo earned his Member of the British Empire, MBE, through grit and determination. What has Kemi earned apart from being a rabble rouser and, in the words of Keir Starmer, the pretender title of the custodian of Western civilisation? The answer is – NOTHING.
Kemi Badenough only gained British citizenship in injury time. It was because her father, who had migrated to Britain before returning home, saw that Margaret Thatcher was about to cancel citizenship by birth and sent her back before the curtain call. There is nothing extraordinary about that. At best, she is a citizen by naturalisation because her parents were like many others – bloody immigrants! Her ancestry would eternally remain Nigerian.
In other words, Kemi is as much a citizen as countless other British-Nigerians or immigrants who beat the clock then and have lately achieved citizenship by naturalisation. If she had been born now, she’d have had to work hard and be in good standing to have a British passport – just like the rest of the Joneses. There is nothing about Kemi’s UK citizenship that qualifies her more than Barack Obama, Kamala Harris or even her predecessor in office, former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Nothing makes her special.
This constant quest by Kemi to make her constituents notice her or her forced patriotism doesn’t erase the fact that she is black. As a black person in Britain, she’d be subjected to the same underlying racial prejudice as any Kemi, Kola, Jack or Gill. Just as the leopard cannot change its spots, Kemi cannot erase her Nigerianness.
If Kemi were to be any of the other wave-making Nigerians in the diaspora denying her Nigerianness, it would be understandable. Before returning home to serve, the inventor of the Chevrolet Volt, Jelani Aliyu, was a US citizen. Wọlé Soyinka, a global icon and Chinua Achebe, who are better known and will continue to be than Kemi, do not deny their Nigerianness. David Oyelowo is a proud Nigerian. Chiwetel Ejiofor is a proud Nigerian. The Imafidon family, renowned mathematical geniuses, proudly identify as Nigerians.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an Amazon of the literary world, proudly celebrates her blackness as well as her Nigerianness. Many other global icons whose shoes Kemi Badenough is not worthy to stoop down and untie identify as Nigerians even when they hold better passports proclaiming them citizens of more worthy nations.
It is so sad that at times this upstart sits behind a microphone, she spits drivel about her roots. It’s as if she’ll never climb higher on the pecking order without attacking Nigeria. It does not matter how high she climbs on the UK political ladder, her biography will always read – born of Nigerian immigrant parents. Most wise people in her shoes leverage on that, not try to bleach it off their blackness.
A lot of us hold our green passports with pride in spite of the challenges, challenges that we lament on a daily basis. We know, from the way the cookie of racial politics crumbles, that the only place we will ever feel welcome and accepted, wax and all, is motherland Nigeria.
I hear that she once said she considers herself a Yoruba and not a Nigerian. Well, that’s sad because her elders say ọmọ àlè nii fi ọwọ òsì júwe ilé bàbá rẹ̀ – only a bastard points at his father’s abode with the left hand.
I don’t think I’ll ever dignify Ms Badenough with a response from here. I think she’s enjoying the nuisance of the mileage that both social and mainstream media give her drivel. For the rest of us who live on political criticism, our angst is not against the motherland we love, it is against its perpetual ruiners. That is the difference.
Finally, I will paraphrase the saying of my wife, (a concrete Yorùbá woman married to a Yagba man), whenever the argument of origin comes up, she will rhetorically ask if the Yoruba nation’s census would be incomplete without the Yàgbà or anyone else. Is Nigeria incomplete without Kemi? A person has added nothing to Nigeria, even when she lived and schooled here. Was she the best student in Federal Government College? Are there no people who graduated from that ‘prison-like’ condition to become stars in life?
There’s nothing that Kemi says about Nigeria that has not been better said by people more eminently qualified than she would ever be. She has not earned the clout or pedestal to make Nigeria perceived worse than it already is. Nitorina ńkọ́, kó yàra sẹnu burúkú ni déédéé síbí.
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