Nigerian-born Kemi Badenoch, 44, has been named the new leader of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom on Saturday, November 2, replacing Indian-born Rishi Sunak.
Sunak resigned after the party’s resounding defeat in the July general election. Badenoch triumphed over former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, securing 57% of the party membership’s vote.
Styling herself as the “anti-woke” candidate, Badenoch has made clear how her upbringing in Nigeria shaped her conservative views. Badenoch is from the Yoruba ethnic group in South West Nigeria. She’s married to British-born Hamish Badenoch, a former Tory politician turned banker.
Hardline View on Immigration
In her maiden House of Commons speech, she reflected, “Growing up in Nigeria, I saw real poverty—I experienced it, including living without electricity and doing my homework by candlelight, because the state electricity board could not provide power, and fetching water in heavy, rusty buckets from a bore-hole a mile away, because the nationalised water company could not get water out of the taps.“
The new party leader said she felt both honored and a sense of urgency regarding her election, saying, “The task that stands before us is tough. We have to be honest about the fact that we made mistakes and let standards slip. It is time to get down to business; it is time to renew.“
Despite her success in the leadership race, Badenoch’s position on issues like immigration has drawn criticism. “We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not,” she said, signaling her intention to maintain strict immigration controls. Her hardline approach suggests that many Nigerians hoping for favorable immigration policies, just because she is an immigrant too, may be disappointed.
The new opposition leader must now unite a fractured Conservative Party while addressing the massive losses it suffered in July’s election. Her leadership will be tested in weekly Prime Minister’s Questions, where she will face Labour leader and orator Keir Starmer. The Tory’s number in the House of Commons significantly declined after July.
However, supporters describe Badenoch, the former equalities minister, as a determined and combative leader. “She would cross the road to bite your ankles, whether you were goading her or not!” said a long-time admirer. Others see her as a sharp, controversial figure with the potential to re-energize the party.
She now has to assemble a shadow cabinet prepared to challenge the Labour government and offer alternative views on Labour policies and actions.
More About Kemi Badenoch
Born Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke on 2 January 1980, Mrs. Badenoch became an MP for North West Essex in 2017. She served in various Cabinet roles under Prime Ministers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak from 2022 to 2024.
Her political career began with her unsuccessful bid for a seat in the London Assembly in 2012, but she was later appointed as an Assembly Member. A supporter of Brexit, she held several ministerial positions, including Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families and Secretary of State for International Trade.
After the Conservative Party’s defeat in the 2024 general election, she became Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and later emerged as the party leader in the 2024 leadership election.
Badenoch was born in London but lived in Nigeria and the United States before returning to the UK at age 16. She studied Computer Systems Engineering at the University of Sussex and worked in the IT sector before joining the Conservative Party in 2005.
She has three children with her husband, Mr Hamish Badenoch – two sons and a daughter. They married in 2012.
Second Nigerian To Eye The Top
Kemi Badenoch is not the only Nigerian who has aspired to the top of a major party in the UK.
Chuka Umunna is a British politician and former Member of Parliament for Streatham, serving from 2010 to 2019 was once thought to head the Labour Party. Umunna was born on October 17, 1978, in Lambeth, London, to a Nigerian father and English-Irish mother.
Umunna’s political career began when he was elected as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Streatham in 2008. He became Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, and Skills in 2011 and served in the Shadow Cabinet until 2015. He left Labour in 2019 to form Change UK but later joined the Liberal Democrats.
However, after losing his re-election bid in 2019, Umunna left politics and is now the Global Head of Sustainable Solutions EMEA.
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