Nigeria isn’t cheering its female ‘Trump’ export to the UK

Have a listen to this five-minute clip from a Sunday morning talk show by a television channel owned by a Nigerian: https://x.com/nelsabbey/status/1853153374893465703

The fragment shows an Arise News programme from November 3. Three Nigerians are sat in a studio discussing the rise to political prominence in Britain of Kemi Badenoch. They weren’t complimentary about the British Nigerian politician who was elected leader of the main UK opposition Conservative Party on Saturday, November 2.

Basically, the Arise panel expressed reluctance to claim Ms Badenoch, suggested she was a Trump-like figure, perhaps even the female equivalent of an Uncle Tom: “a white woman in a black woman’s skin”.

Funnily, what they said was a version of what Labour MP Dawn Butler has been getting into trouble about for briefly retweeting. She shared someone’s post calling “Badenochism … white supremacy in blackface”.

The Arise News panel noted that Ms Badenoch “talks down” to Nigerians and paints a “disparaging…Western image of Nigerian society”. They rejected her description of Nigeria as a backward culture that wants to send its daughters back into the kitchen. It was a reference to Ms Badenoch’s claim that her numeracy skills, interest in science and schoolwork was dismissed by the country of her foregathers, and that she was urged to return to traditional female occupations such as cooking.

Ms Badenoch, pointed out one of the women on the Arise News panel, comes from a family of intellectuals and lecturers. She added: I know of no one in Nigeria from such a background who would be told to confine themselves to the kitchen.

One of the panellists mused that it was unfair to pay attention only when someone like Donald Trump speaks in racist and dismissive terms. What about when a black woman says the same things, he asked?

He added that Ms Badenoch may be “desperately trying to please the white Conservative establishment” but concluded that for all that she is a British national, “she will be reminded eventually because of her biology and heritage that she can’t be English and she will have to be careful in the manner that she portrays the values that she thinks that she represents”.

How to read all of the above?

Disappointment that one of Nigeria’s exports is less an advert for the country than a walking distress signal about Lagos?

Or genuine sadness that Ms Badenoch, an irascible and scrappy sort of politician, is so unkind about the country of her ethnic heritage and the people she looks like?

Whatever you think, Ms Badenoch’s attitude is not entirely unusual. It’s the sort of behaviour we’ve seen before. In British politicians of Indian heritage such as Priti Patel and Suella Braverman. And in American politicians of Indian heritage such as Bobby Jindal.

This raises an interesting question: if you’re mostly unkind to those who might be regarded as closest to you, can you really be expected to have empathy for anyone else?

Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com