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Kemi Badenoch, leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party, says Nigeria’s status as an oil-producing country has not translated into reliable electricity for its citizens.
Badenoch grew up in Nigeria before returning to the UK as a teenager to continue her studies.
Asked in an interview with The Spectator about how her upbringing in Nigeria shaped her political views, Badenoch said her experiences have hardened her.
“My belief that we need to drill our oil and gas comes from growing up in a country… Nigeria is an oil-producing country, never had electricity,” she said.
“It is very easy to have resources under the ground, but stupid public policy means that you can’t use it.”
She likened policies formulated by Ed Miliband, UK secretary of state for energy security and net zero, to the leadership of Nigerian heads of state before democracy.
“And I see quite a lot of what Ed Miliband is doing as being very much like what the Nigerian military dictatorships were doing in the 80s and 90s — ‘the government is going to take control, we know what’s best, we’re going to redistribute’. Stupid ideas which eventually just bankrupt the country,” she said.
Badenoch said she does not want Britain to become a “third-world country” like Nigeria.
“Fundamentally, my views about how we should run our country come from growing up in a place that was very poor. You grow up in a third-world country and you look at why it is termed ‘third world,’ and I don’t want that to happen here,” she said.
The politician added that the UK, alongside its history and wealth, is always taken for granted, and called for a revival of “British culture”.
