I was born and bred in Northern Nigeria, that section of the country vilified by Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party of Britain. When I was growing up, I used to walk past two churches – one Anglican (were we not colonized by Britain?) and the other Catholic – at the edge of Birnin Kebbi, my hometown. Today, those two churches are practically sittingin the centre of the town. Since then, there has been a proliferation of churches and mosques all over Birnin Kebbi and to the best of my knowledge, there has never been any sort of religious altercations among the inhabitants.
So, when a friend asked me a couple of months ago to write an article to counter Kemi Badenoch’s muckraking of Nigeria, I dismissed him as someone who’s unnecessarily touchy about a foreign-based Nigerian’s right to express her exasperation about our country’s messy political and economic situation.
It therefore came as a rude shock to me when Kemi Badenoch resumed her toxic denunciation of Nigeria and its people, this time fielding a divisive rhetoric. In her latest salvo, Kemi declared herself as Yoruba and added that she shared “nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where Islamism is.”
Well, I want everyone out there to understand that there are more Yoruba people in the “north of the country ….where Islamism is” than there are in entire Britain. These Yoruba people are living peacefully with other ethnic groups in the North and again there has been no record of ethnic quarrels or fights between them and any other groups here. So, it’s plain lies for Kemi to say that she has nothing in common “with the people from the north of” Nigeria when her kinsmen are here in their millions and they certainly have so much in common withtheir hosts. Let nobody believe Kemi when she says she has “nothing in common with the people from the north” because in actual fact millions of people from Northern Nigeria speak English!
Equally fallacious is Kemi’s description of “northern people of Nigeria” as “ethnic enemies” of the Yoruba. It’s true that three main ethnic groups stand out in Nigeria – the Hausa-Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba and they have always jockeyed for political power but it’s mendacious to say that the Yoruba and “the people from the north” are enemies. Even Kemi’s most famous political forebear in modern Nigeria, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, did not describe Northern Nigeria as “ethnic enemies.” Perhaps, it’s important to stress that the current government in Nigeria is led by a Yoruba man and (even the one before it) emerged from a coalition of Yoruba and “the people from the north of the country.”
Don’t let Kemi fool you; the “people from the north of the country” are not homogenous. Northern Nigeria is made up of diverse people from different ethnicities and religions. Thus, you find the Angas, the Berom, Fulani, Hausa, Idoma, Jukun, Kilba, Margi, Nupe, Mumuye, Tarok, Tiv and others too numerous to mention living with one another in peace.
Yes, lately, there has been an Islamist insurgency by Boko Haram but it’s cruel of Kemi to pretend that the insurgency is a way of life for our people. Far from it, there has been concerted effort by the government and the people to combat this menace. A combination of our military and civilian volunteer groupings has together fought the insurgents and their worst atrocities are behind us. Nor is it something peculiar to Nigeria; if Kemi is really informed, she will have known that there has also been a wave of extremist Islamic insurgencies in Burkina Faso, Cameroun, Mali, Niger, etc. Surely, the leader of the opposition in his royal majesty’s government cannot pretend that she doesn’t have these facts.
I recall that in January 1988 in the heydays of military rule, Nigeria’s then military head of state, the self-styled President Ibrahim Babangida, received the then Prime Minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher and her husband, Dennis Thatcher, on an official visit in Lagos. South Africa was still some years away from majority rule then and apartheid in that country and how to end it had become the stickiest matter bedeviling the age old warm relations between the old colonial power and its ex-colony. Since the 1970s, Nigeria had staked its diplomatic prowess on the defeat of apartheid by whatever means. Nigeria had even assumed the chairmanship of the United Nations committee canvassing for sanctions against South Africa and was giving diplomatic, financial and material support to that country’s freedom fighters. Britain had been deemed as a stumbling block in the imposition of comprehensive sanctions against the apartheid regime. Once again, Britain was stalling onwhat Nigeria and the rest of Africa regarded as the most peaceful means of ending minority rule in South Africa. No less a person than the iron lady and the Prime Minister Thatcher, had arrived Lagos to reiterate Britain’s opposition to the imposition of sanctions against South Africa. “Apartheid is a repulsive and a detestable system, a deep affront to human dignity and basic human rights…”, conceded the iron lady, but “punitive measures (sanctions) would make the problems worse” by increasing the hardships already suffered by black South Africans…..and “damage the economies of South Africa’s neighbouring states.…”.
The subtext? Britain would not support the imposition ofcomprehensive sanctions against the white minority rule in South Africa. Side by side with her “minimalist” approach to the question of removing apartheid, the prime minister was pushing for increased trade between Nigeria and Britain. “Nigeria matters to Britain and I hope Britain matters to Nigeria”, Thatcher passionately declared in Lagos. We will brook nosanctions against white minority rule in South Africa (she indicated) but let us trade with each other. What an audacious woman!
Nonetheless, Nigeria, using the UN anti-apartheid committee it chaired, continued to mobilize other well-meaning countries who imposed sanctions against the apartheid regime. It was a combination of these biting international economic, political, cultural and sporting sanctions as well as unrelenting internal protests inexorably that saw to the demise of apartheid. Margaret Thatcher was damn wrong!
Enter Kemi Badenoch and her acrimonious pomposity. Kemi ismaking the same mistake about Nigeria as Thatcher did. Since her emergence as the leader of the opposition in Britain, she has become increasingly critical of Nigeria and its people. Apparently, she regards criticism of Nigeria as part of the credentials she must possess to reposition herself and become electable into the office of the prime minister of Britain. Kemi deserves pity because her extravagant, ill-motivated and unwarranted criticism of our country has the potential to also hurt her.
Kemi claims to be honest but very soon, her comic garrulity is bound to complicate her narrative and expose the contradictions in her story. The claim that she saw “lizards run out of the taps” when she was growing up in Lagos is ludicrous as even the most conservative water engineers know for a fact that water pipes are no habitat for lizards.
Kemi’s description of our country puts a strain on people to people interaction between Nigeria and Britain and mayeventually affect the warm relations between our two governments especially if she has the fortune of becoming the British prime minister. By constantly calumniating Nigeria and its people, she has set the stage for frosty relations between us and Britain. I’m aware that many people, both in Britain and in Nigeria are stunned by these misguided, unprovoked and unjustified criticisms of her country of origin. Hitherto, many Nigerians, including “the people from the north…where Islamism is”, felt like they owned a part of her and wished her well in her political career in Britain. But lately, Kemi’s political hubris and her unrelenting negative criticism of our society has left a sour taste in their mouths.
Majority of our compatriots will be fine if Kemi refuses to be our “public relations representative”, but we have serious objections to her penchant for using Nigeria as a punching bag in her ambitious attempt to become the British prime minister. If Kemi has no fond memories about Nigeria to share, if she has nothing positive to say about our people, she should just steer clear of us and our country.
There are other factors that do not endear Kemi to the people of Northern Nigeria: her rabid support for Israel, her implacable stance against immigration, her implied aversion for Islam and Muslims and her ridiculous portrayal of the British culture as something superior to other cultures are things viewed with disbelief and consternation here.
It’s inconceivable that “one of us” is attempting to be more British than the British who killed Nigeria’s Caliph Muhammadu Attahiru 1 in 1903, beheaded him and then displayed the photographs of his headless body so the natives could see just how barbaric the British were. Thus, began the British colonial, master-servant relationship with the people ofNorthern Nigeria. Is this the wonderful culture, is this the unquestionably superior culture that Olukemi Adegoke wants Northern Nigerians to relive? I have heard Kemi deride the habit of women not talking to strangers at the door, preferring to call their husbands to speak to those strangers instead, and I wonderwhat’s the problem with that. Clearly, Kemi is taking a pot shot at the millions of Indian, Pakistani and other coloured Muslim women who have followed the dictates of their religion which forbids them from talking to strangers. And so I ask, what is wrong with the culture that demands that husbands, being the heads of their families, attend to strange men at the door? What makes that culture bad? Who does it harm?
Let there be no illusion, Kemi’s Britishness is limited. She’s only British as per paper documentation. Certainly, her hair braids, the colour of her eyes, her broad nose and wide open nostrils, her large lips, the colour of her skin, all disqualify her from being truly British. Contrariwise, these are the self-evidentcharacteristics Kemi shares in “common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where Islamism is” (back in Nigeria). So, even though Kemi doesn’t want to be a Nigerian, she cannot be British.
Kemi’s orientation for a realistic life in a bourgeois society is also incomplete. Britain has for centuries relied on trade, most times exploitative trade, to thrive. And so in an increasingly diminished Britain, outside of EU and out there in the cold, Kemi’s new home country needs all the trading partners it could get to continue to flourish. So, instead of the savages in Boko Haram captivity, Kemi will do well to begin to see our people as a possible market for British goods and services. It stands to reason therefore, that Kemi must cease to antagonize us. This is a no-brainer! Conversely
Regarding immigration, one would like to draw the attention of Kemi and indeed all British to the fact that the United Kingdom is not a favourite destination for “the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where Islamism is” in Nigeria. Our people travel to the United Kingdom to study or carry out business and mostly return when they’re done. You don’t find our people among the homeless, sleeping in the streets of London or Liverpool or Brimingham or Manchester. In our poverty, we’re gratified and dignified. The richest Black man on earth, who happens to be one of us, has declared several times that for all of his wealth, he does not own a house in London. Now, that’s telling, isn’t it?
Nevertheless, we take in our strides Kemi’s brutal reminder that our society has fallen short of what it should do to provide us the much needed qualitative life. Corruption, nepotism and man’s inhumanity to man have put us down for too long and we must turn a new leaf if we want to flourish among the comity of nations. So, we thank Kemi for reminding us that we are a backward people and that she relishes her escape from our hopeless circumstances.
Lest we forget, the Northern Ireland violence which grew out ofan ethno-nationalist and religious conflict lasted for decades and was sorted out as recently as on 10th April 1998 in an agreement named Good Friday. Yet, Britain has been in existence for hundreds of years and the British Empire has colonized and controlled about 56 countries in the world. I want Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the opposition in his majesty’s government to understand that nation-building is an ongoing thing that can take hundreds of years to achieve.
Meanwhile, there’s an urgent task that Kemi must carry out and it’s no more public relations for us than it is for Britain. Kemi must now proceed with her quixotic mission of rescuing us from our backwardness by simply exposing those who have stolen from Nigeria over the years and stashed away the loot in the United Kingdom. Surely, Kemi has the names of these looters and the worth of their loot all over the United Kingdom. So, how about naming and shaming them now that she’s in a position to do so?
It’s up to Kemi Badenoch to make valid and useful suggestions on how we can make Nigeria better rather than launch those naïve, cantankerous, rude and unproductive criticisms againstour dear country and its people. We take serious exceptions to people going out of their way to say we have no redeeming qualities as a people and country simply because those critics want to burnish their political leadership credentials in their adopted countries.
It’s a pity that this ambitious, bellicose and rambunctious Olukemi (Adegoke) Badenoch has come as far as she can politically and will not be elected as the prime minister of Britain. In this regard, Kemi should look no further than across the Atlantic. Kemi cannot hope to advance her political career based on the amount of shade she throws at Nigeria. She’s one of us, notwithstanding her denial and grandstanding. So, she should speak well about us if she must or leave us alone.
Mr Abdullahi writes from 19, Shantali Road, Kofar Kola, Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi state. 0803 379 4389
