The UK’s Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, has revealed that her parents benefitted from the 1970s oil boom in Nigeria. Ms Badenoch has a Nigerian ancestry and has lately revealed her complex relationship with the West African nation.
Ms Badenoch touched on how her parents made money from the oil boom during a podcast session with American journalist Bari Weiss.
The 44-year-old British politician spoke about her background and how she came from a relatively wealthy family.
“My family shaped my character a lot more. I was born into a relatively wealthy family, and I was born in January 1980,” Ms Badenoch said. “This is just as the oil boom is taking off in the country in the 70s.”
Further explaining how her family made their fortunes during the early oil boom, Ms Badenoch said her father was not directly involved in the oil business but served as a doctor to many people working there.
“He was a doctor who had lots of oil company patients, and he worked for them to some extent as well,” Ms Badenoch explained. “They would send their patients to him. So he didn’t work for the companies, but he treated them and got paid very well.”
Ms Badenoch stirred up a hornet’s nest with several comments aimed at the dysfunctional state of Nigeria.
For example, the UK political chieftain considered herself more of a Yoruba person than a Nigerian, pointedly declaring she has nothing in common with northerners in the country.
“I find it interesting that everybody defines me as being Nigerian. I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity (Yoruba),” the politician told British outlet The Spectator in an interview. “I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where Islamism is.”
