Kemi Badenoch said she “doesn’t do PR for Nigeria” after the vice-president of the African nation blasted her over comments she made about the country where she grew up.
Kashim Shettima said the Tory leader has been “denigrating her country of origin” with remarks she made about it being corrupt and dangerous.
Giving a speech on migration, the vice president listed influential people whose families had migrated to other countries, praising former PM Rishi Sunak as a “brilliant young man, he never denigrated his nation of ancestry.”
But he added: “Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the British Conservative party. We are proud of her in spite of her efforts at denigrating her nation of origin.”
Shettima was met with applause when he said: “She is entitled to her own opinions; she has even every right to remove the Kemi from her name but that does not underscore the fact that the greatest Black nation on earth is the nation called Nigeria.”
Ms Badenoch’s spokesperson hit back at the claims, saying “Kemi is not interested in doing Nigeria’s PR, she is the Leader of the Opposition in the UK.”
He added: “She tells the truth, she tells it like it is, she isn’t going to couch her words. She stands by what she said.”
The comments by Shettima appear to refer to a series of remarks made by Ms Badenoch about Nigeria being corrupt while she grew up there and criticised the impact of socialism in the country.
When running for the Tory leadership in 2022 she said: “I grew up in Nigeria and I saw first-hand what happens when politicians are in it for themselves, when they use public money as their private piggy banks, when they promise the earth and pollute not just the air but the whole political atmosphere with their failure to serve others.
“I saw what socialism is for millions. It’s poverty and broken dreams. I came to Britain to make my way in a country where hard work and honest endeavour can take you anywhere.”
Ms Badenoch’s parents are both Nigerian, but she was born in the UK, before moving back there until the age of 16.
During the family’s time in Nigeria, her father was a GP and her mother was a lecturer in physiology.
She spoke Yoruba before she spoke English, and later said that she was “to all intents and purposes a first-generation immigrant”.
