Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, a former Minister of External Affairs, has criticised Kemi Badenoch, the leader of UK’s Conservative Party, for her recent denigration of Nigeria.
Akinyemi, a former director general of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, criticised Badenoch for using the global stage to advance her political career.
Speaking during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today program on Monday, Akinyemi said Badenoch will soon learn her lessons, adding that her stories about Nigeria are for political gains.
He said, “How the daughter of a professor of UNILAG, her father, who was a medical doctor, a girl who went to the international school at UNILAG, would make it sound like she was selling groundnuts and selling water in Lagos to advance her political career.
“She would soon learn that you don’t throw your people and your culture under the bus to advance your career. She is making a mistake, but she would soon learn.”
The octogenarian urged the UK Conservative Party leader to leave Nigeria alone and concentrate on growing her party in the UK.
He added, “After all, right now, there is even a right-wing political party in the United Kingdom that is even to the right of the Conservative Party. So, what she should be focusing on is how to regain that right-wing profile of the Conservative Party and leave Nigeria alone.”
Chronicle NG reports that Badenoch, at an event organised by a British think tank producing research on economic and social issues, Onwards, stated that she doesn’t want the UK to suffer the fate of “terrible governments” like Nigeria.
She had 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. 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.”
