The Nigerian Presidency has pushed back strongly against comments made by British Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, dismissing her comments as a “cock and bull story.”
The backlash follows Badenoch’s viral interview with The Free Press, where she shared a negative experience with the Nigerian police, contrasting it with her interactions with law enforcement in the United Kingdom.
Badenoch recounted an incident where Nigerian police allegedly stole her brother’s shoes and watch, attributing the behaviour to poverty and systemic challenges in Nigeria.
“The police in Nigeria will rob us,” she said with laughter.
She described Nigeria as “a very poor country” where giving firearms to law enforcement could foster abuse.
This criticism was amplified by President Bola Tinubu’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Temitope Ajayi, who took to X (formerly Twitter) to accuse Badenoch of fabricating stories about her Nigerian upbringing.
Ajayi wrote, “You are Kemi Badenoch, an opposition leader and a future Prime Minister of the UK. A journalist asked you about the state of the police in the country you hope to govern.
“Instead of answering with how you would make the police more efficient and accountable in protecting the people of the UK, you resorted to an inane cock and bull story of how policemen stole your brother’s shoe in Nigeria.”
He also questioned the authenticity of Badenoch’s narratives, stating, “For someone who has obviously lied about everything she said about her upbringing in Nigeria just for the feel-good effect of keeping her new job, how can we be sure her brother’s so-called police experience in Nigeria was not another made-up story?”
Ajayi further accused Badenoch of exaggerating her childhood struggles in Nigeria, highlighting inconsistencies in her past statements.
“Her story of carrying a desk and chair to sit in class at ISL didn’t add up. Her claim that she had no clean water to drink was complete baloney for a girl who grew up in an upper-middle-class family—her mother a university professor and her father a successful medical doctor who ran a well-known private hospital with a rich clientele.”
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