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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Holly Patrick

Kemi Badenoch says she no longer considers herself Nigerian

Kemi Badenoch has said she no longer identifies as Nigerian and has not renewed her Nigerian passport since the early 2000s.

Speaking to Gyles Brandreth's Rosebud podcast, the Conservative leader, who was born in London and raised in Lagos and the United States, said: “I’m Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there because of my parents, but by identity I’m not really."

Ms Badenoch explained she felt "home is where my now family is”.

The Tory politician was born in Wimbledon in 1980 before her parents took her home to Nigeria.

She was one of the last people to receive birthright citizenship because she was born in the UK before these rules were abolished by Margaret Thatcher the following year.

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