Kemi Badenoch, Nigerian by birth, was recently elected Leader of the UK Conservative Party and Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition. She occupies the second highest position in the UK political world. She could become the UK Prime Minister after the next election. That is how politically important she is. She follows in the footsteps of the greatest statesmen in the political history of Britain. A number of misguided Nigerians, particularly Yoruba, even more particularly Fani-Kayode, rather than celebrate her success, have chosen to write offensive and vile things about her. I have an obligation as the Leader of the Yoruba Party in the UK to respond.
The Yoruba say: ‘epa nparare oloun paja’ (the parasite killing himself says he is killing the dog).
I have never met nor spoken to Kemi Badenoch, but I knew her parents. They were contemporaries of mine at university. Kemi’s mother, Feyi (nee Adubifa), attended the Queen’s School then located at Ede, at the heart of the Yoruba country. The all-girls’ school, established in 1952 on the ascension of Elizabeth II to the throne of England, formally taught aspects of life in addition to academia – emotional character, etiquette, deportment, home economics etc. In 1967, Philistines in government destroyed the ethos of the Queen’s School when they moved the school to Ibadan for reasons that defied logic and which no one could fathom. Kemi’s father, late Femi Adegoke, attended Ibadan Grammar School, which was established as an all-boys’ school by an Anglican Bishop in 1913. My late Grandfather, who was a ward of Reverend Olubi, was one of the first students at Oke Are. My late Uncle, another student, became one of the very rare Black faces at Trinity College Dublin in the late1950s. My own school, Ibadan Boys’ High School, was a couple of miles or so up the road from the Ibadan Grammar School. In those days, I visited both schools for one student fair or another.
Kemi Badenoch’s parents were not unique in having her born in the UK or sending her back there to be educated. I qualified from the UCH, Ibadan in 1973. Like me, most of my classmates chose to go abroad for specialist training, with more than two-thirds, for one reason or other, choosing never to return to Nigeria to practice medicine again. Those who returned either left their children behind in the host country or sent them back there to attend for higher education. Nearly all of those children, including Kemi Badenoch, remained in the host country never to return to Nigeria. Many Nigerian pregnant women came abroad to have their babies born because to have them born in Nigeria was to gamble with your life or with the life of your unborn baby. Indeed, some of us lost relatives in Nigerian hospitals to undiagnosed or badly treated eclampsia of pregnancy.
Fani-Kayode is angry because Kemi Badenoch does not want the UK to transform into another Nigeria. She does not want to walk one mile to fetch water, neither do I. I fetched water from the river some 70 years ago. Fani-Kayode thinks it is ok to be doing the same in 2024. Fani-Kayode thinks it is ok to live in a country where Fulani barbarians and savages use cattle to destroy Yoruba farmlands, rape our female folk, murder our defenceless farmers, kill worshippers in their church pews, abduct school children to make into sex slaves, kidnap people for ransom, and generally make life insecure and intolerable. Fani-Kayode thinks it is ok to live in a country which in 2024 is unable to provide constant electricity, motorable roads, and basic amenities. Fani-Kayode thinks it is ok to live in a country where politicians treat the people with contempt and disdain, and wantonly pillage the treasury for money which like bastards they then spend to develop other people’s countries. To Fani-Kayode the best response is to keep quiet.
Fani-Kayode is outraged that Kemi Badenoch refused invitation from Abike Dabiri-Erewa, who apparently is Nigeria’s Special Adviser on the Diaspora. First, Dabiri-Erewa has no standing and no mandate to demand audience with the UK Leader of Opposition. That is the job of the High Commission. Dabiri-Erewa is not even in the pecking order. Second, Dabiri-Erewa displays an alarming emptiness, and a belief in her own self-importance, when she equates Kemi Badenoch’s refusal to meet with her as evidence of lack of ‘Nigerianess’. Who does Dabiri-Erewa think she is? There is no ‘Nigerianess’; it is no more than grandstanding, an illusion created by Nigeria’s privileged. Third, Dabiri-Erewa is not known to many of us in the Diaspora. Making herself known to us, and doing something concrete with the privilege that she has been given, should be her priority not engaging in political stunts.
Neither Fani-Kayode nor Dabiri-Erewa could doubt the ‘Yorubaness’ of Kemi Badenoch. She wears her Yoruba name proudly. She is the daughter of a staunch Yoruba nationalist, who was chairman of the Voice of Reason group of Yoruba intellectuals. Recalling the halcyon days of the Awolowo leadership, Femi Adegoke said: ‘We must look back to the commanding heights of our group history to guide us forward. An arrangement that enabled Western Region, from Ibadan, to institute free education and to build the first television station in Africa, not through ‘Federal might’, but through its local enterprise and leadership vision…We insist that the responsibility and resources for development must be handed back to the federating units, as close as possible to how they were originally conceived in the Nigerian union.’
Fani-Kayode is infuriated that Kemi Badenoch would exclude some Muslims from Northern Nigeria from Britain. Fani-Kayode knows she has good reasons. Nigeria’s herdsman killers and terrorists are Muslims from Northern Nigeria. They and their sponsors do not believe in the rule of law. The typical Northern Nigeria Muslim wants to rule over others. Just days after Nigeria’s independence in 1960, their leader, Ahmadu Bello, said this: ‘The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our grandfather, Othman Danfodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We must use the minorities in the North as willing tools and the South as conquered territories and never allow their future.’ Northern Nigeria Muslims have ruled Nigeria for 47 years since 1960. In that time, they corrupted the character of Nigeria and of Nigerians for the worse. They jettisoned Nigeria’s Republic contract of 1963, and in 1999, forced on Nigeria an unconstitutional military constitution to ensure their perpetual political dominance. They divided Nigeria into economically unviable states and local governments for political advantage. They introduced the concept of ‘Federal character’ to enable them to reach the top without effort. Unlike the rest of us, Northern Nigeria Muslims want to live in the 18th century with no modern education, and free to marry girls even before they reached the age puberty. To Fani-Kayode the best response is to keep quiet.
Fani-Kayode is indignant that Kemi Badenoch does not support ‘reparation’ for the Transatlantic slavery. Fani-Kayode knows she is not alone in this view. David Lammy, the British Foreign Secretary, a descendant of slaves, does not support ‘reparation’. Up to 90% of Black people in the UK are ambivalent about ‘reparation’; they think it is all in the past and we must look to the future. Their lack of support is due in part to their perception that ‘reparation’ was only about cash compensation, and the politicians would misuse or steal the money anyway. I am for ‘reparation’ because it will enhance the status of the Blackman in the world. Confining the Transatlantic slavery to the dustbin of history means that Black lives do not matter. The Transatlantic slavey is the Yoruba Holocaust; 5 million Yoruba were starved to death or killed by the British in slave holdings on the Atlantic coast and in the bowels of their slave ships.
The debt of Transatlantic slavery must be paid but not in the way envisaged by recent coverts like Fani-Kayode. The Yoruba were the most enslaved Africans. The persistence of Yoruba culture, tradition, religion etc in the Americas attest to that. The British were the primary Yoruba enslavers. The British therefore owe the Yoruba a specific debt that they must pay. The Yoruba Party in the UK wants a Yoruba Homeland in ‘reparation’; Britain owes the Yoruba unreserved support for actuating it. Although Yorubaland is incorporated into Nigeria, it is a state in its own right.
As a matter of international law, not sentiment, Yorubaland is a state within the confines of the country called Nigeria. The Yorubaland was confirmed a state by Britain (Queen Victoria) concluding a treaty with the Yorubaland (Oba Adeyemi, Alaafin of Oyo) on 23 July 1888. Britain ratified that treaty on 16 June 1890. The 1888 Britain-Yorubaland Treaty became British domestic law on the payment of a contractual stipend to the Alaafin. Lord Shelbourne’s Niger Committee Report of 1890 made absolutely clear that Britain had no jurisdiction over the ‘Yoruba country’. Britain did not have legal authority to amalgamate the Yorubaland into Nigeria in 1914. This is the sort of intelligent discussion we should be having with Kemi Badenoch as the Leader of Opposition not the myopic spite of the likes of Fani-Kayode.
Fani-Kayode is a Nigerianista. Self-blinkered, wilfully ignorant, deluded, suicidally optimistic Yoruba liberal; the type that danced as the Titanic sank. Intellectually mummified into humiliating fellow Yoruba, fuelled by jealousy, disguised as cynicism and patriotism. Like Fani Power, his father, Fani-Kayode is a political prostitute. Fani Power betrayed the Yoruba. After the 1959 election, Azikiwe joined the Fulani government of Balewa, Fani Power immediately joined him. Fani Power resigned from Awolowo’s Action Group, the Yoruba party, to join Azikiwe’s NCNC, the Ibo party, so that he could get the position of Leader of Opposition in the Western House of Assembly. Fani Power later moved on to join Akintola’s NNDP. Together they rigged the 1964 Western Region elections, a dereliction that arguably led to the 1966 coup d’état. Fani-Kayode junior is no friend of the Yoruba.
Baasegun (Dr) Olusola Oni
Leader, The Yoruba Party in the UK
