Tunde Rahman 
Kemi Badenoch’s ill-advised denigration of Nigeria has refused to go away. Her belittlement of the country of her ancestry is still generating passionate public discourse within and outside the media space, and it appears the matter will not go away anytime soon.
Exasperated by Kemi Badenoch’s misguided attacks on Nigeria, Vice President Kashim Shettima recently counseled her to drop the Kemi in her name and bleach her ebony skin to white to further appease her Tory party and British establishment.
And perturbed and seemingly lost by all that, my daughter, Kemi Mushinat, who recently graduated in Communication Studies, asked what was wrong with the name Kemi.
There is nothing wrong with the name, I explained. But a lot is wrong with Kemi Badenoch (Nee Adegoke), the Leader of the British opposition Conservative Party, who opted to behave, as the Yoruba would describe it, “bi omo ale to fi owo osi ju we ile baba e”, meaning like a bastard who would go out to denigrate her ancestry by pointing the offensive finger at her roots. Honour and dignity are inherent in the name Oluwakemi, indeed in any name.
But what confers dignity, what glorifies a name, is the character the bearer brings into it. Kemi Badenoch left much to be desired, disparaging Nigeria, our motherland.
She painted a gory picture of her growing up years in Nigeria from the middle of the 80s to around 1996, highlighting stories of poverty, infrastructure decay, decadence, corruption, police excesses, and leadership failure.
Perhaps some of her narratives could be true, particularly in the time that immediately followed the National Party of Nigeria’s (NPN) misrule and the indiscretion of the emergent military regime.
However, her stories reek of generalisations and prejudices often associated with most analyses by a section of Western media and commentators.
They view Nigeria with their jaundiced lenses, describing the country as made of a Muslim North and Christian South, oblivious of the various Christian minorities in the North and, the plethora of Muslims in the South and the multiplicity of ethnic groups in the two divides that make a mockery of any analysis of a monolithic North or South.
They view us Africans with many unproven, unorthodox assumptions. My problem is with Mrs. Badenoch, an African, whichever way you slice it, and the character she has chosen. When Vice President Shettima lambasted her for demeaning Nigeria, Kemi Badenoch thought she had a clincher:
“I find it interesting that everybody defines me as Nigerian,” she said. “I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity (Yoruba).
That’s what I am. I have nothing in common with the people from the North of the country, the Boko Haram where the Islamism is; those were our ethnic enemies and yet you end up being lumped in with those people.”
In that statement, the Tory leader disavowed Nigeria and excoriated the North but exalted the Yoruba. She repudiated the whole, attacking one part of the nation but embracing another.
Kemi Badenoch grossly misfired, hiding under the finger of ethnic nationalism. Perhaps it would have been pardonable if, for instance, she opposed Nigeria’s federal system and canvassed regionalism or confederacy.
To condemn one race and elevate another is like playing one part against another. That utterance is dangerous in a diverse and volatile society like ours.
The North (read the Hausa-Fulani, Kanuri, Tiv, Birom, Mangu, Ibira, Nupe, and many others who cohabit the entire Northern region) is no enemy of the Yoruba as Mrs Badenoch insinuated.
The North voted massively for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a Yoruba man, to emerge president in 2023, as they did for the late Bashorun MKO Abiola, the winner of the annulled June 12 election in 1993. To label them the enemies of the Yoruba is condemnable.
Badenoch’s Yoruba roots emphasise good character and promote good neighbourliness, religious harmony, peaceful coexistence, respect for elders, and respect for other people’s rights.
