Kemi Badenoch has entered the political thread at an international level with her comments about Nigeria. But there is more to this than Nigeria. First, she is quoted as saying:
‘“I saw what socialism is for millions. It’s poverty and broken dreams. I came to Britain to make my way in a country where hard work and honest endeavour can take you anywhere.”1
This statement which she has repeated many times is quite shocking. She is accurately describing the devastation of the national economy at the time, but the devastation was caused by structural adjustment programs forced on Nigeria by the IMF and the World Bank. It is now widely acknowledged by the IMF and World Bank that the structural adjustment programs brought considerable suffering and little benefit. However Badenoch claims this proved to her that socialism does not work. Anyone suggesting General Abacha or any of his predecessors were socialists would be met with derision in Lagos.
Her comments about Muslims is entirely inflammatory. As these comments have no basis in her ethnicity we must assume that people with close connection to SIS put these words there. Let me explain. Yorubas are 50% Muslim and 50% Christian and many families are 50% of each with on going traffic. This is illustrated in Badenoch’s own family where her cousin’s 2 daughter married a Yoruba man who had converted from Islam to Christianity. On the other hand we know that SIS are now heavily involved in sowing discord wherever they go and stirring up conflict between North and South Nigeria would be up their street. However, while a Christian/Muslim North/South might be credible in the South East it is not credible in Yorubaland. Badenoch did not inherit any Islamophobia from her ethnicity. The current President of Nigeria, is both Yoruba and Muslim. Someone else’s hand is showing here, not Badenoch’s memory.
Returning to economics. What is important here for the UK is that Kemi Badenoch is stating as clear as night and day that she does not know the difference between neo-liberal economics and socialism. This raises the question: does she understand any economics at all as this is so fundamental a difference in economic theory. Now, teenagers can be forgiven for getting things entirely wrong. But as they grow up we assume they will make efforts to learn. This in turn raises the political question: would the British economy be safe in the hands of a politician who has made no effort to learn basic economics?
- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/kemi-badenoch-nigeria-government-row-b2662642.html. ↩︎
- Yemi Osinbajo – former Vice-President of Nigeria ↩︎