The Nigerian Presidency has dismissed comments made by UK Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, comparing the UK’s governance issues to those in Nigeria.
According to Special Adviser to the President on Policy Communications, Mr. Daniel Bwala, Badenoch’s remarks will have no impact on Nigeria’s international relations or efforts to attract investors.
“I don’t think it would have an effect because she is not the government in power,” Bwala said in an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Monday.
“Usually, these international relationships or collaborations are dealings between governments. Because she is not the government in power, it will not have any effect.
“The only problem we have with Kemi, I think, is the rhetorics because Kemi belongs to the right base in the United Kingdom which is what you see in this populism around the world; that you can deepen on your support system if you can feed off of the anger of the people,” Bwala said.
“And so she is building a rhetoric of denigrating Nigeria, demarketing in Nigeria, so she can probably win the acceptance or acceptation of the rights in her party. And that to me is counterproductive because if you look at Rishi Sunak, he is also of Indian origin.
“There has been this issue of gang rape in India. He has never used that as a weapon to promote what he believed to be a departure from what is likely to be believed as hereditary or history of the Indian people, but she has always denigrated Nigeria.”
Persecondnews recalls that Badenoch nade the comments while delivering her first speech of the year at an event organised by Onward, a British think-tank producing research on economic and social issues.
Speaking on the importance of building trust and touting the Conservative Party as the right group to fix Britain, the politician likened a possibility of the UK becoming like Nigeria if the system is not reformed.
She said: “And why does this matter so much to me? It’s because I know what it is like to have something and then to lose it,” Badenoch told the audience.
“I don’t want Britain to lose what it has. I grew up in a poor country and watched my relatively wealthy family become poorer and poorer, despite working harder and harder as their money disappeared with inflation.
“I came back to the UK aged 16 with my father’s last £100 in the hope of a better life. So I have lived with the consequences of terrible governments that destroy lives, and I never, ever want it to happen here.”
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