There is comedy watching Kemi Badenoch, the British politician of Nigerian origin, attempt to rebrand herself as the Margaret Thatcher of Croydon.
This is a woman who once grew up in Nigeria, eating jollof rice, enduring NEPA’s blackouts, and probably shouted “Up NEPA!” like the rest of us. Yet, somewhere between Lagos traffic and London’s double-decker buses, she downloaded the full “White Woman Update Pack” and started speaking like she was born inside the Queen’s drawing room.
Her sustained malignment of Nigeria is as puzzling as it is tiring. Nigerians, should not waste even one breath on it. Why? Because we’ve seen this movie before. You know the type: the cousin who spends three months in Peckham and returns home declaring they can no longer eat with their hands because “cutlery is more hygienic.” Kemi has simply taken that same performance global.
The truth is, Nigerians don’t reckon with her lies. She is like that distant aunty at a wedding who insists she can no longer speak Yoruba because she once had tea at Harrods. The room looks at her, nods politely, and promptly moves on to amala. That’s exactly how Nigerians regard Kemi. Background noise, like the faulty generator humming somewhere in the street.
It is almost tragicomic that someone who once stood in the same queues at FGC, Shagamu, chased the same mosquitoes, cut the grass with machete and sweated under the same prison as other students, as she claims, now looks at Nigeria as if she were never part of its story.
But her reinvention is only amusing, not alarming. Nigerians have bigger fish to fry, or in this case, suya to roast. While she sharpens her tongue on Nigeria, Nigerians are busy arguing over Wizkid versus Davido, dragging Liverpool on Twitter, and negotiating fuel prices.
So, let Kemi speak. If she wishes to audition permanently as “a white woman in black skin,” she is free to do so. But Nigerians know better. A parrot may perfect the Queen’s English, but at the end of the day, it is still eating corn, and still a parrot.
And that is why no Nigerian should waste their breath on her.
**Ogunpitan is a Creative Industry & Media Technologies Entrepreneur
