JUSTICIA on The Southerner Newspaper
Sunday, August 17, 2025

Kemi Badenoch has declared herself the child of the British Empire because she was born in Britain. She used to be a Nigerian, born to a privileged Nigerian family, enjoying the privilege of a pampered child who went to the best schools in the Nigerian educational system: University of Lagos International School and the Federal Government Girls College, Shagamu.

At one point, she had a Nigerian Passport, visited Nigeria regularly. The last time she came with her family, she was spotted at the polo club in Lagos, obviously savouring the Nigerian social scene reserved for the privileged few.

She became a politician and chose to be elected to the British Parliament, the House of Commons. She appealed to the sentiments of fellow Nigerians. They supported her en masse, and she won.

And she kicked the ladder with which she climbed into the palace of Westminster. She rose quickly to become a minister, then Her Majesty’s Shadow Prime Minister.

The allure of parliamentary privilege and power overwhelmed her. She lost her sense of self-worth and self-esteem.

She became self-hating, became a liar and delusional, and reveling in disparaging Nigeria, her homeland, and her roots whilst competing for space and attention with the vilest politicians in the British realm and the Americas. She now sees herself as the protector of Western civilization.

And to protect the British Isles and Her Majesty from awful immigrants from poor and war-stricken countries. Everyone from those countries became a criminal who should be shipped to faraway territories like the former genocidal country of Rwanda.

Kemi, thus, became a crime that must be purged from her being. So she stopped identifying as a Nigerian. For Us left here, we can proudly say, We Are Nigerans. Ask the Tigresses and the Super Flacons. She should tell some of her colleagues in the British parliament.

Nigeria lives in us, whether we were born here or not. Forget for once that the name ‘Britain’ was the name given to the Roman-conquered province of Britannia, just as the name ‘Nigeria’ was given to the people who lived in the River Niger area who were conquered or tricked into signing dubious treaties of protection and after that colonized through subterfuge in the ‘scramble for Africa’ that was planned and executed in Berlin in 1884–1885.

The Berlin conference gave Nigeria to Britain and claimed Nigeria as its area of influence. If Nigeria had existed as an uninhabited island in the sea and the population had been shipped in from Britain to inhabit it, then Britain would have been credited with creating this Eden for them and recognized as such.

Kemi would not have been a crime. Nothing to be ashamed of. But because Nigeria did exist before the scramble for Africa and then the amalgamation of the North and South, even if it was not called by that name, Nigeria cannot be said to have been created by another entity.

Like Britain, the United States, and other countries, Nigeria evolved and is still evolving as a home for Africans living in the River Nigeria area. Beyond this naming ritual are our geographical space, our beautiful landscapes, our hills and valleys, and other rivers like the Benue, Imo, Cross River, Kaduna, Gongola, Osse, Ogun, etc., and other major landmarks in our territorial boundaries that have given their names to the people who live in the area.

Peter Furtado asserts that a country’s history is vital to national self-definition. As such, it is often very controversial, but it is not so much what was said by academic historians. Still, what is passed to every generation through family networks, historical events, traditions, and beliefs.

History, according to Furtado: “Is the air we breathe, in the cities (villages) we inhabit, and in the landscapes we roam; many of the world’s most troubled regions are those with historical disputes, sometimes going back hundreds of years; the failure of each side to appreciate the historic passions of the other can be fatal to efforts to build peace.

Many Nigerians who feel disappointed with the failure of leadership and unfulfilled prospects in the nation since independence in 1960 have often blamed this on the forced union of disparate and diverse peoples by the British and have been perpetually transfixed on the idea that Nigeria was an artificial creation of the British which lacked national ambition and legitimacy or what is sometimes called mischievously, as the mistake of 1914, and therefore, doomed.

However, they must also know that history is replete with countries with similar processes of evolution that have gone through similar, if not a more precarious and torturous, route to nationhood.

Take the example of India. Before India was declared a British colony in 1750, it was already on the road to nationhood based on a solid economic foundation with a manufacturing base stronger than Britain’s.

The Indian national identity was framed by its geographical area as Nigeria. According to Mihir Bose, the name India was ‘invented by foreign invaders’ like the Persians and the Greeks to define the people living around the River Sindhu. Because of the difficulty pronouncing the Sanskrit name, they ‘corrupted it to Indus.’

According to Bose, the Greeks and the Persians used ‘diverged tongues’ which conveyed different meanings. The Persian word was aspirated and came up with ‘Hindus’ while the Greek was softly breathed and came out as ‘India.’ From the Greeks, this name describes the second most populous nation on earth.

Beyond the myths and legends of the evolution or creation of nation-states and what they are called is the more critical point of how people see or identify themselves; these cannot be imposed or invented.