Chairman and CEO of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM), Abike Dabiri-Erewa, has stated that Nigeria will not compel Kemi Badenoch, the newly elected leader of the UK’s Conservative Party, to identify with her Nigerian roots.
Dabiri-Erewa, whose office oversees activities of Nigerians in diaspora, disclosed that her office has reached out to Badenoch a few times and got no response.
“It depends on if she identifies the Nigerianess in her. We have reached out to her once or twice without any response, so we don’t force people to accept to be Nigerian,” Dabiri-Erewa said on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief programme on Wednesday when asked if the government has identified with Badenoch.
“If you appreciate the Nigerianess in you and you want to work with us, we are open to everybody, but we cannot force you to appreciate the Nigerianess in you. You remember the Miss Universe Nigeria in South Africa.
“Until she got into a little problem with South Africa she identified with Nigeria, and she identified with Nigeria, came to Nigeria and we hosted her. As long as that blood is in you, you are a Nigerian.
“So, it depends on Kemi to decide whether appreciates the Nigerianess in her, whether she wants to work with Nigeria, but we cannot force anybody.”
The Conservatives on Saturday elected Badenoch as its new leader, replacing Rishi Sunak, who quit after the party’s disastrous showing in the July general election.
Badenoch, 44, came out on top in the two-horse race with former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, winning 57 percent of the votes of party members.
Badenoch, who becomes the first black leader of a UK-wide political party, said it was an “enormous honour” to assume the role, but that “the task that stands before us is tough.”
“We have to be honest about the fact we made mistakes” and “let standards slip,” she said.
“It is time to get down to business, it is time to renew,” she added.
Badenoch was born in London in 1980, but spent her childhood living in Lagos, Nigeria, and in the United States, where her mother lectured.
She returned to the UK at the age of 16 to live with a friend of her mother’s due to the deteriorating political and economic situation in Nigeria, which had affected her family.
