By Peter Omopo
London, July 20, 2025 — Kemi Badenoch, leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party, has expressed frustration over her inability to pass on Nigerian citizenship to her children due to what she described as gender-based limitations in Nigeria’s nationality laws.
Speaking during an interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN, Badenoch cited her personal experience to highlight disparities in global immigration systems, particularly between Nigeria and the UK.
“It’s virtually impossible, for example, to get Nigerian citizenship,” she said. “I have that citizenship by virtue of my parents, but I can’t give it to my children because I’m a woman.”
Badenoch, who was born in the UK to Nigerian parents and spent part of her childhood in Lagos, used the example to criticise what she sees as imbalances in immigration policies, noting that many Nigerians benefit from more accessible pathways to British citizenship.
“Yet loads of Nigerians come to the UK and stay for a relatively free period of time and acquire British citizenship. We need to stop being naive,” she stated. “That is why, under my leadership, we now have policies to make it harder to just get British citizenship. It has been too easy.”
When asked about cultural integration and whether she supported the idea of Nigerian immigrants recreating “mini-Nigerias” in the UK, Badenoch strongly opposed the concept.
“That is not right. Nigerians would not tolerate that,” she said. “There are many people who come to our country, to the UK, who do things that would not be acceptable in their own countries.”
Her comments have sparked conversation about gender discrimination in nationality laws and the complexities of cultural assimilation in increasingly diverse societies.
