Kemi Badenoch, the Briton of Nigerian origin who wants to succeed Boris Johnson

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The votes follow one another among the British Conservatives and Kemi Badenoch remains in the race for the succession of Boris Johnson who should know his epilogue on September 5, 2022 (link in English*). The former Minister for Equality is among the sixty politicians whose resignation led to that of the former British Prime Minister.

Kemi Badenoch, 42, counts “tell the truth” for “to help” his fellow citizens. In his gallery in The Times, where she explains her candidacy, the MP for Saffron Walden (Essex county, in the east of the country) advocates the establishment of a “reduced government which concentrates on the essentials”. Furthermore, she wishes “reduce taxes for companies and individuals” but does not intend to embark on a tax one-upmanship on the subject “my tax cuts are more important than yours”. Married to Hamish Badenoch and mother of three children whose future well-being she says she is concerned about, Kemi Badenoch believes that she is “the candidate of the future”. And in the face of the climate emergency, she “believes” in reducing carbon emissions but not to the point of causing “bankruptcy” from the United Kingdom “to achieve this”.

Kemi Badenoch, who joined the Tories in 2005 aged 25, is described today by The Guardian as “a rising star” of the Conservative Party. Olukemi Olufunto Badenoch, née Adegoke, was born in January 1980 at Wimbledon, London. Her two parents, doctors, are from Nigeria and it is in this country that she grew up, before joining Great Britain at the age of 16 after a stay in the United States. An engineer by training, a profile that she puts forward today to explain why she is able to “to fix” her country, Kemi Badenoch held several positions in the Conservative Party, before becoming a member of Saffron Walden in 2017. Her fellow citizens renewed their confidence in her two years later.

In her first speech in Parliament in 2017, the young woman looked back on her journey in a speech that was both firm and full of humor. Kemi Badenoch, who regularly claims her African and Nigerian origins, already recalled that she “(had) selected” Great Britain, a country where “the british dream” that she embodies is possible. To know how to become a parliamentarian in “a generation”. “This is a country where a young girl from Nigeria can settle at the age of 16 and be accepted as a Briton and have the great honor of representing Saffron Walden,” she rejoiced then. Kemi Badenoch also explained why she joined the Conservative Party. “I think the state should provide social security, but it should also provide people with a way out of poverty. As a woman of African descent, I also think that Africa has a lot to teach us. “.

His other country, Nigeria, is one of the many reasons that motivated his political commitment. She underlined it again recently by formalizing her candidacy for the post of Prime Minister. “I am ambitious for our party and our country. I chose to become a Conservative MP to serve and I chose this country because here I can be free and I can be anything I wanted to be. I grew up in Nigeria and saw with my own eyes what happens when politicians are there only for themselves.”

(A stray bullet from Kemi Badenoch’s campaign to become UK Prime Minister hits Nigeria)

This is not the first time that she has been critical of Nigeria where she says she has experienced poverty. In 2017, she confided that she had been forced to do her homework by candlelight or to fetch water because the national companies supposed to provide these basic services were unable to do so. This does not prevent Kemi Badenoch from emphasizing that Nigeria remains “a great country”, faced with difficulties.

Her Nigerian origins are also part of the defense arsenal of the conservative parliamentarian who is often tackled, in particular by the Labor Party, on her approach to racial issues. If she admits to having been the victim of discrimination and that there is racism in the country, Kemi Badenoch considers it necessary to launch “a positive conversation” which relies on “facts and evidenceare” to avoid “divide” more the United Kingdom around these issues. “No prime minister, black or white, can effectively address systemic and persistent racial inequality if its very existence is fundamentally denied”opposed him recently, in the columns of the Guardian, Simon Wooley, a British activist behind Operation Black Vote, an organization that campaigns for racial equality in the United Kingdom.

In a recent interviewwhere Kemi Badenoch was responding to another attack on the subject, the parliamentarian replied that she “(did) you don’t only need people whose unique experience (as black boils down to) being an ethnic minority in the UK” teach him a lesson.

As Minister for Equality, she was also “criticized by members of the government’s LGBT+ advisory committee for delays in banning conversion therapy‘ “, reports AFP.

Like other political observers, The Guardian valued “unlikely that Kemi Badenoch will become the next Prime Minister”. However, given its results in the various elections and therefore its support, it is well on the way to “secure a prominent position under the leadership of the winner”. For now, Kemi Badenoch continues to collect points. She would have distinguished herself during the debates organized by the Tories, on July 16 and 17, according to several political analysts. Unlike the party whose image seems to have been tarnished by the heated exchanges of contenders for its leadership. Kemi Badenoch and her opponents – Secretary of State for International Trade Penny Mordaunt, ex-Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, Foreign Minister Liz Truss and MP Tom Tugendhat − will again be decided by ballot starting July 18, 2022. The two finalists in the competition, whose diversity of candidates is unprecedented, will be known on July 21.

*All links in this article are in English and mostly paid


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