THIS PIECE concerns the trending public declaration of a UK parliamentarian, Kemi Badenoch (KB) of (recent) Nigerian origin. The said declaration had to do with the advocacy by the said parliamentarian for an immigration policy in the UK that makes it more difficult for intending immigrants in certain categories to enter, and others to stay in, the UK.
The declaration had, expectedly, created a whole lot of uproar in Nigeria, with some raising objections and some endorsing the declarations. Yet, other reactions have indicated surprise while others have simply betrayed confusion and superstition; superstition in the sense that socio-political and related conclusions reached by that segment of respondents are not only unrelated to evidence but totally superficial.
We must note that the socio-economic and political worldview associated with Badenoch is the same as had been imposed on Nigeria by the World Bank and the IMF since Obasanjo’s first coming in 1976 and especially since January 1984 when the military wing of Nigeria’s ruling class relieved its civilian wing (under Alhaji Shehu Shagari and Alex Ekwueme) of the burden of enforcing the World Bank/IMF asphyxiation of Nigeria called SAP. An organic re-enactment of the coalition that had been auctioning Nigeria to the off-shore and on-shore vultures was what happened at the Presidential Library launched in Minna in February 2025.
The Badenoch affair is a metaphor or, if you like, a constellation of metaphors, to the extent that it represents manifestations of moments in the lives of individuals, of moments in the collective lives of a generation, moment in the lives of a social group or class, or moments in the trajectory of the consciousness of a whole people. I will struggle to clarify the foregoing categories which, I must say, may, or not, be related causally and in time and space.
ALSO READ: Alternative Approaches To Oppositional Coalition In Nigeria; By Aminu Habibu Jahun
I have become increasingly fascinated in recent time, with the way individual persons influence events, how events influence individuals and how both shape history and historical moments. Our interpretation of events and moments, of course, depend on our perspective regarding the world and the social and economic slots we occupy therein.
Kemi Badenoch, we are told, was born by Nigerian (Yoruba) parents in London in 1980. She is said to have spent most of her early years in Nigeria before returning to live in the UK at the age of 16 (that would be about 1995).
Her family lived at a “middle class area” in Surulere (Lagos). She attended private International School in Lagos and did A Level in the UK, later specializing with a doctorate in Engineering and Information Technology – the frontiers that empower and animate technology and keeps intimidating most, especially the peripheries, of “the world.”
We need to be as specific as possible about the Kemi Badenoch phenomenon to enable us navigate the rather complex analysis attempted herein concerning today’s burgeoning global situation and its specific and related manifestations in capitalist metropolises and their peripheries. We rely on information said to be provided by Badenoch herself, and that which already exist on the internet and in public view.
Badenoch, leader of UK opposition Conservative Party, is reported to be an admirer of Margaret Thatcher (who was reported to be closely allied to the American Republican President Ronald Reagan, who was credited with the roll-back of social welfare program, including supply of milk to children in the UK, who was a great admirer of Gorbachev under who the USSR was dismantled.
While what is being manifested by KB is the specific outcrop of the consciousness of an individual person, in this case a “successful” African immigrant in the metropolis of those who colonized her grandparents, it is a category of consciousness that we see especially in a significant segment of present-day elite, or aspiring elite, of many former colonies such as Nigeria. This explains three very important aspects of the current responses of the dominant category of the educated elite which the late Professor Ayankanmi Ayandele referred to as the “deluded hybrids” and the “wind sowers”.
Badenoch, said to be on the right wing of the Conservative Party, is reported to have objected that her party is too much like Labour Party which is traditionally allied to the labour movement and the working class. All of these, of course, tally with Badenoch’s commitment to the policies of “less government” and the rule of the so-called “market forces”.
ALSO READ: The Conclave And The Key Contenders To Succeed Pope Francis
We must note that the socio-economic and political worldview associated with Badenoch is the same as had been imposed on Nigeria by the World Bank and the IMF since Obasanjo’s first coming in 1976 and especially since January 1984 when the military wing of Nigeria’s ruling class relieved its civilian wing (under Alhaji Shehu Shagari and Alex Ekwueme) of the burden of enforcing the World Bank/IMF asphyxiation of Nigeria called SAP. An organic re-enactment of the coalition that had been auctioning Nigeria to the off-shore and on-shore vultures was what happened at the Presidential Library launched in Minna in February 2025.
The Badenoch phenomenon exhibits a whole lot of middle-class characteristics including confusion in, and general ambivalence (polyvalence of world view, general social and political opportunism, etc.). For example we are told that Kemi Badenoch is no fan of identity politics; implying that race does not matter, notwithstanding that anti-immigration and market-forces control policies play out significantly as racial policies in racially-differentiated polities where particular races become hegemonic as in Europe and the main European diasporas such as USA, Canada, Australia, etc., and in settler colonial states of various hues (pre-1980 Zimbabwe, colonial Kenya, apartheid South Africa, and Israel)!
In spite of KB’s struggle to distance herself from “Labour-ish” tendencies of her Conservative Party, she failed to understand that both parties elicit similar contradictions arising from ideology convergence that mainly serve capitalism at home and capitalist exploitation on global scale.
ALSO READ: Danger Lurks In Our Slumber; By Abadom Lawrence Amechi
On various issues, the conservatives, like KB and the labourites, are on exactly the same page – both KB and Keir Starmer are, for example, on the side of Ukraine’s Volodymy Zelensky rejecting Trump’s “dictator” characterization of Zelensky; and she is on exactly the same page with Donald Trump on the latter’s rabid xenophobia and anti-immigrant posture! Similar curious twists, if not utter elements of confusion, are obvious in KB’s world view.
The second aspect of the character of this class is the massive ambivalence and ambiguity that at once make members identify culturally and psychologically as those of the ruling class and/or the super race, but at the same time generates doubt as to where, or who, they really are. Kemi Badenoch not only distanced herself from Nigeria but has to distance herself from the Muslim in the North just like this category of African elite quite often denigrate their colour, and openly expresses doubt as to “whether we are humans”! When an African elite says “black people” or Nigerians “can’t make it” or “we are doomed”, she/he is not sure whether he/she should include herself/himself among these “hopeless Africans”!
A report by Premier Christian Newsof November 2, 2024 said, KB “…identifies as agnostic” as “…honorary Catholic and as a Cultural Christian”. In a subsequent report in the same medium (16th December, 2024), she reportedly declared: “I don’t belief in God any more”. Also, the Premier Christian News of December 16, reported: “recently she [KB] distance herself from Nigeria stating that she has nothing to do with the Islamic northern region of the country”.
ALSO READ: What Next After Pope Francis’ Death?
It may be very tempting to conclude from most of the foregoing that what is being manifested arises solely from the prestige of a clearly intellectually endowed Nigerian gaining citizenship in a country dominated by an alleged super race; and in a historical moment when racial humiliation had continued in spite of the protracted anti-colonial resistance, post-colonial resistance of neo-colonisation, and betrayal by the neo-colonial elite, of the neo-colonial popular mass in the liberation struggles of the latter.
This thing about excelling in the (education) as culturisation (formal and informal education) of the neo-colonial elite must be understood as a strategic process of re-engineering or re-conscientizing – altering the intellectual and psychological foundations of the resistance against neo-colonialism and re-colonisation!
While what is being manifested by KB is the specific outcrop of the consciousness of an individual person, in this case a “successful” African immigrant in the metropolis of those who colonized her grandparents, it is a category of consciousness that we see especially in a significant segment of present-day elite, or aspiring elite, of many former colonies such as Nigeria. This explains three very important aspects of the current responses of the dominant category of the educated elite which the late Professor Ayankanmi Ayandele referred to as the “deluded hybrids” and the “wind sowers”.
ALSO READ: Nigerians Served Peculiar Mess, A La Carte; By Owei Lakemfa
The first aspect is how relatively comfortable class of individuals in post-colonial societies characterised by mass deprivation tend to behave in positions of governance or authority as direct policy makers or simply bureaucrats. In this aspect, Kemi Badenoch’s responses tally fully with that of current rulers in Africa who serve western imperialism and its agencies. Their response must thus be understood correctly and concretely as class response.
We must add that the political and cultural hybridity, which produces the outright delusion in in-country and diaspora African middle class, is an inter-generational phenomenon that has taken particularly heavy toll among the current adolescents and “the youth”. This has resulted not just in struggling to “japa” (get the hell out of Nigeria); it has developed a psychosis of self-denigration and belief in all sorts of anti-Nigeria, anti-black-Africa superstitions. This syndrome is common-place also among the older generation, including “highly-educated” individuals; especially those who land highly paid “international” jobs in transnational corporations, NGOs and controlling ideological centres and other international institutions.
It is that class response that was betrayed when Thabo Mbeki, in post-apartheid South Africa, reportedly quipped over his economic policies: “…call me a Thatcherite”. This ruling class adopted the neo-liberal Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) that created hunger, homelessness, unemployment and xenophobia/ethnic antipathies in Europe, North America, and Nigeria!
The second aspect of the character of this class is the massive ambivalence and ambiguity that at once make members identify culturally and psychologically as those of the ruling class and/or the super race, but at the same time generates doubt as to where, or who, they really are. Kemi Badenoch not only distanced herself from Nigeria but has to distance herself from the Muslim in the North just like this category of African elite quite often denigrate their colour, and openly expresses doubt as to “whether we are humans”! When an African elite says “black people” or Nigerians “can’t make it” or “we are doomed”, she/he is not sure whether he/she should include herself/himself among these “hopeless Africans”!
ALSO READ: Ciroma, Coomasie: We Celebrate Life, We Thank God For It, By Hassan Gimba
The third aspect of the psychology of this class is the layered character of self-doubt, self-denigration and self-hate.
First, she distances herself from Nigeria. Secondly, distancing herself from the “Islamic north” effectively implies that there is a “north”, the Christian north, that she may be willing to tolerate. Thirdly, we may be wondering, “is it “The north” or the “Islamic”, or both that offend Kemi Badenoch here, especially as half of her Yoruba ancestry today are Islamic”!
The point about the centrality of social class here, is that Kemi Badenoch’s economic and political ideology – neo-liberal, libertarian and globalist, privatisation and private accumulation, capitalism, less government, or rather take-over of government by the few rich parasites of society – coincide with those of today’s owners of Nigeria – custodians of looted public assets, owners of vast agricultural: lands, banks, refineries, the choice estates in Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Enugu, Sokoto, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Ilorin, etc. The social and economic interests and commitments of the class cut across national, ethnic and religious boundaries which they promote and manipulate for their intra-class negotiations!
The foregoing is why they all, ahead of articulation of their political vision to the electorate in Nigeria, travel thousands of kilometres to Chatham House to link up with their Euro-American class collaborators to seek approval and for harmonisation of their positions with that of the transnational interests of finance capital headquartered in Washington and Brussels!
ALSO READ: The Forgotten Identity Divide: Unifying Nigerian Goats; By Jibrin Ibrahim
KB was thus probably there in London mourning Queen Elizabeth II when a leading Vice-Presidential candidate in the 2023 general elections from “Islamic north(ern)” reportedly went to lay one of the very first wreaths at Buckingham Palace to mourn Her late Imperial Majesty. Earlier on, the “southern” Presidential “running mate” of the “north(ern)” VP candidate went to orchestrate a photo-op at 10 Downing Street!
We must add that the political and cultural hybridity, which produces the outright delusion in in-country and diaspora African middle class, is an inter-generational phenomenon that has taken particularly heavy toll among the current adolescents and “the youth”. This has resulted not just in struggling to “japa” (get the hell out of Nigeria); it has developed a psychosis of self-denigration and belief in all sorts of anti-Nigeria, anti-black-Africa superstitions. This syndrome is common-place also among the older generation, including “highly-educated” individuals; especially those who land highly paid “international” jobs in transnational corporations, NGOs and controlling ideological centres and other international institutions.
Some of these are “seconded” to African countries by international agencies (such as World Bank, UN, AfDB) to implement the agendas of neo-colonial forces “talking down” at everybody and treated as expatriates and paid as such (in foreign currencies) in their own countries!
The second segment of the generation that responded to, and fulfilled, their mission is that which, along the line, repudiated the mission for which they ostensibly sacrificed so much, by simply joining the ruling class either directly and shamelessly waging war against all the principles they are known to have stood for, or simply disappearing in the wilderness that is constantly refurbished by the ruling class and international capital. As our country is full of this category that repudiated everything they stood for, the struggle on the side of our people is imperilled and retarded.
The category we characterised so far, we must add, quite often had no record of anti-colonial, anti-neo-colonial struggle or of any participation in the resistance that characterise their generation before or immediate post-independence or the resistance against neo-liberalism in the specific refurbishing of neo-colonialism that debuted in sub-Sahara Africa as the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) in the late 1970s and early 1980s – the program fully “civilianised” under previous military dictators and their business partners, friends and even, previous enemies, and operative from 1999 till today!
ALSO READ: Two Hundred Years After: The Evil French Freedom Tax On Haiti; By Owei Lakemfa
But there is also the inter-generational category of local and diaspora educated elite, again with different social backgrounds: some privileged, some who managed to escape from the dehumanization, inequality, and impoverishment of colonial and post-colonial imperialism who, in Frantz Fanon’s formulation, “discover[ed] their mission and decided to fulfil it”. This inter-generational category must be differentiated from the preponderant one that never discovered, not to mention fulfil, the mission of mass liberation. Inability of a generation to discover the mission [of liberation], of course, simply prescribes “betray(al)” of the mission.
But like an individual responding to the mission, a generation – every generation – is destined to end up in one of two ways: one way is to remain faithful and committed to the liberation mission. We can give examples (some in Nigeria): Gani Fawehinmi, Festus Iyayi, Ola Oni, Mokwugo Okoye, Eskor Toyo, Balarabe Musa, Chima Ubani, Bamidele Aturu, Alao Aka-Bashorun, Benedicta Madunagu, Joe Ihonde, Ali Chiroma. In other climes, we may mention Ho Chi Min, Nelson Mandela, Samora Machel, Steve Biko, Hugo Chavez, Thomas Sankara, Kwame Nkrumah, Che Guevera, Fidel Castro.
Two issues arise from this reflection. One of them is the need for us to try to understand the trajectory of resistance, and that of collaboration and surrender, in the struggles of the dispossessed of the world, and of countries like Nigeria, at generational and inter-generational levels. In the specific case of colonised peoples, the unending development of underdevelopment by the same forces under colonial and neo-colonial setting, has created general neurosis, frustration, self-doubt and endorsement of the “explanation” and culture of the oppressor.
The second segment of the generation that responded to, and fulfilled, their mission is that which, along the line, repudiated the mission for which they ostensibly sacrificed so much, by simply joining the ruling class either directly and shamelessly waging war against all the principles they are known to have stood for, or simply disappearing in the wilderness that is constantly refurbished by the ruling class and international capital. As our country is full of this category that repudiated everything they stood for, the struggle on the side of our people is imperilled and retarded.
And so is the struggle of working people globally and the struggle of territories like Palestine, Panama, DR Congo, Greenland, and even Canada and Nigeria; in an age of blatant, unabashed and audacious imperialism with the new “leaders” of the global north hegemony making proposals to buy or annex sovereign countries like Gaza, Canada or Greenland!
We see all these even in the metropoles like USA where the militant black movement and the radical students’ movement created the legendary struggles of the late 1960s and early1970s which produced the likes of Stokely Carmichael, Huey P. Newton, Abby Hoffman, Angela Davies, Patty Hearst, Eldridge Cleaver. We find parallels of the responses of faithfulness, and of apostasy, apart from those of plain surrender especially by individuals and collectives.
Two issues arise from this reflection. One of them is the need for us to try to understand the trajectory of resistance, and that of collaboration and surrender, in the struggles of the dispossessed of the world, and of countries like Nigeria, at generational and inter-generational levels. In the specific case of colonised peoples, the unending development of underdevelopment by the same forces under colonial and neo-colonial setting, has created general neurosis, frustration, self-doubt and endorsement of the “explanation” and culture of the oppressor.
Understanding this nexus is crucial for “overcoming”!
The second issue is the need for the oppressed, their allies and their organisations to reinstate the primacy of class analysis and appropriate class responses in the constant orchestration, by the ruling circles, of confusion via promotion of secondary social and political (we characterise them as secondary; we did not say trivial) contradictions of nationalisms, ethnicities, gender, races, generations, and confessions.
Emeritus Prof Olorode is Member, Secretariat Collective, Movement for Socialist Transformation (MOST-Nigeria), Odoje Biodiversity Center, Ogbomoso. e-mail: omotoopo@gmail.com
