Kemi Badenoch versus Kashim Shettima

Kemi Badenoch needs no introduction in Nigeria because she is the new Tory Party leader in Britain who Nigerians want to be very proud of. They want to be proud of her because she is one of them who has been so elevated in a country which for many decades ruled their country and left her a wobbly government and structure that left power in the hands of an oligarchy in the North which has stalked any meaningful development in Nigeria. But Kemi Badenoch still needs some introduction to put her in context regarding her recent spat especially with Nigeria's number two man Kashim Shettima.

Kemi Badenoch is a full-blooded Nigerian. She may have been born in the United Kingdom, her parents are full-blooded Nigerians. She lived in Nigeria around Itire in Lagos where her late father Femi Adegoke practiced medicine. Femi Adegoke attended a kind of secondary school you and I attended: Ibadan Grammar School, in rusty Ibadan. Her mother also attended the Queens School in Ibadan. Her mother worked at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) where she was a physiology professor. She is now in the United States of America. Kemi schooled at the International School, University of Lagos, a high brow school no doubt but still taught by Nigerians and owned by a bad performing public university. She reportedly fetched water from wells which meant throwing rusted metal buckets into the well and carrying it over some distance back home. What does that tell us like we all have experienced that kind of situation? It means the house in which Kemi and her parents lived in Lagos had no pipeborne water supply and so it fell on Kemi who was born in Britian to fetch water for the family use. It is possible that like you and I, Kemi probably drank from this well water. She probably lived in Nigeria where she experienced darkness consequent on frequent power outages. But she left Nigeria and lived with her mother in the United States of America from where she moved back to Britain to have her university education in computer engineering. In one of her visits home, her brother's shoes and wrist watch was stolen by police. Is anybody going to doubt that? Don't Nigerian police steal and maim? Don't they extort? Don't they swap criminals? They allow the real criminal out and arrest a substitute who may just be strolling on the streets and clamp him into jail as the criminal. Many have been killed in that process. Kemi experienced armed robbery in her neighborhood. She told a story of an armed robbery attack in the "next house when you begin to wonder whether it would soon be the turn of your house." Who has not experienced that among us whose lot is it to live in this unfortunate space? For us it has become a common experience that when it does not happen for about three months at a stretch we wonder what must be happening? But for Kemi who had once lived in a sane clime, it was a trauma. Once Kemi had the opportunity again to escape from Nigeria, it was good riddance to bad rubbish as the Americans say.

Her father Femi Adegoke was an activist of the Odua nation group. Kemi says her father is her hero. He taught her everything including possibly that she is Yoruba and has nothing to do with the people from which the boko haram terrorists originated, the Northeast of Nigeria. Kemi declared defiantly, "I'm Yoruba, I have nothing to do with the North.” You should be familiar with the Oodua nation agitators' campaign and the campaign of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB from the East of Nigeria who are claiming that Britian was wrong to have lumped the diverse tribes of Nigeria together at independence. So you know the background or Kemi's attitude now. Don't you? Herein is the reason for the anger of the Vice President, Kashim Shettima when he berated Kemi Badenoch for throwing her country of origin, Nigeria under the bus. For Kemi there was nothing like Nigeria, there were only Igbos, Yorubas, Hausas, Fulanis etc. She's proud to be Yoruba and not proud to be a Nigerian. That came from a Nigerian who had rejected any identity label as a black woman and had beaten all odds and prejudice to emerge the Tory party opposition leader.

Herein is the low thinking of our leaders in Nigeria. A personality that should have been a benefit to Nigeria in her careful management of her foreign policy is allowed to become her enemy. I think the Vice President, Kashim Shettima opened his mouth too wide in condemning Kemi Badenoch, a possible future Prime Minister of Britain, a very strategic nation in the world, the recent decline of the country notwithstanding. How would it be if Kemi Badenoch becomes the prime minister and implements her idea of banning Muslim North from entering Britain? Wouldn't that accentuate the tribal conflict in Nigeria. Despite Britain's rough and selfish treatment of Nigeria in the past, she is still very important to Nigeria. It is to her that our ethnicities turn when they want to agitate for separation. In the way Vice President Kashim Shettima has mismanaged his relationship with Kemi, she may as well lend her voice to the dismemberment of Nigeria. I blame President Bola Tinubu and his foreign affairs minister for not foreseeing this and having a prepared policy to tackle it. This experience has exposed as usual the Tinubu administration as one that is short on strategic thinking. Tinubu's only intention of becoming the president is just in the name and not in the performance. He said recently that his policies have unintended consequences which means he had no forethought of what those policies will mean to Nigerians. Tinubu has borrowed more than Buhari borrowed in just a little above one year in office. To that shorsightedness he has added this mismanagement of Kemi Badenoch affairs. Poor.

Why was the brickbat between Vice President Shettima and Kemi Badenoch so bitter, after all the vice president was not the first to engage Kemi Badenoch. Abike Dabiri, the Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission had. Wise and intelligent woman, she reported to the nation that she had reached out to Kemi Badenoch after her election three times but she had rebuffed her moves. That should have sent a warning signal to the Tinubu administration that trouble was in the offing. It should not have been Abike Dabiri who should have made the move, she was too low in the protocol ladder to do that, perhaps the Vice President or the Secretary to Government or the Minister of Foreign Affairs should have. But Vice President Kashim Shettima was too bitter probably because he was allegedly fingered in the initial growth of the Boko Haram terrorism. It was his area in the Northeast where he had been governor that Kemi Badenoch referred to; that she did not like probably because she has heard a lot about the region from her father. This must compel our leaders to manage our diversity very carefully. No Nigerian must be given the impression that others are more important and can get opportunities easily. We must not sweep it under the carpet that the North is given that kind of treatment today and others feel they are second grade citizens. Merit must be ensured. Many Nigerians are angry with this and when they travel abroad they don't become good ambassadors of the nation. They don't even pass the necessary values of nationhood to their children.

That's the reason Nigeria must scrutinize her prospective leaders before they are allowed to contest elections. Anybody with a bad baggage that could affect the nation's reputation in the international community must not be allowed in leadership position. My information is that Tinubu had the option of choosing the cerebral Yakubu Dogara, former Speaker House of Representatives, as his running mate but intellectual alerness does not matter in Nigeria. Listening to the ex-speaker during the tax reform debates, I have the conviction that he is a lot better than Kashim Shettima. He would have brought intellectuality and wit into Tinubu's administration. But he may have overshadowed Tinubu’s lacklustre stature as well. Perhaps the reason for his rejection. Vice President Kashim Shettima must be advised to tread with wisdom in his job. He is to support his principal but blind support which is against the fact on ground is bad for the job and for the nation. Once he lied that Tinubu is poor and that he has more clothes than the president. What a bad value judgement? If Tinubu is poor, then every Nigerian must want that kind of poverty. The man who has been collecting millions as pension from the the Lagos government, where he is the kingpin for more than 24 years, now on a monthly basis can be anything but poor. Shettima must be the greatest flatterer around Tinubu.

Obviously, the Kemi Badenoch issue has been bungled but it is not too late to employ the diplomatic channels to rebuild and probably to school the possible future prime minister of Britain again about Nigeria and her aspirations. Our leaders should also cover their faces in shame. Can a 44 year old woman like Kemi Badenoch emerge in Nigeria with her kind of aspiration and allowed to breathe especially in the North? The North should realize what evil she is doing to millions of Northern youths both male and female by allowing her oligarchy to repress them. It is better to yield now and in peace before counterforces will naturally arise to stop all oppressions and suppressions.

Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos