British Conservative Kemi Badenoch born of Nigerian parents seeks to replace Boris Johnson

BRITISH member of Parliament for Saffron Walden of Nigerian extraction Kemi Badenoch has thrown her hat into the ring as the race to succeed Prime Minister Boris Johnson heats up bringing the number of Conservative Party leadership contestants to 11.

Following Mr Johnson's decision to stand down as party leader, the Conservatives will hold a leadership contest on September 5 to replace him. Yesterday, Ms Badenoch, a former minister for local government, faith and communities at the Department of Levelling Up and a one-time housing and communities and equalities minster, officially joined the race to become party leader.

Ms Badenoch, 42, born to Nigerian parents in Wimbledon, London, spent some part of her childhood in Lagos and later returned to the UK at the age of 16. Born as Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke, she studied computer systems engineering at the University of Sussex, worked as a software engineer at Logica from where she went on to work at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group as a systems analyst before working as an associate director at Coutts and later as a director at The Spectator magazine.

Ms Badenoch said: “I’m putting myself forward in this leadership election because I want to tell the truth. It’s the truth that will set us free.”

She is centring her campaign around tax cuts, low regulation and attacking the UK’s net zero target, saying too many policies are set up with no thoughts of effects on industries of the poorer parts of this country. Ms Badenoch’s foray into politics began in 2005 when she joined the Conservative Party at the age of 25, she then contested in the 2010 general elections for the Dulwich and West Norwood constituency against Labour’s Tessa Jowell and came third.

In 2015, when Victoria Borwick resigned her seat on the London Assembly and Suella Fernandes, who had also been elected to the House of Commons declined to fill the vacancy, Ms Badenoch was declared the new Assembly Member. She went on to retain her seat in the Assembly in the 2016 election.

Ms Badenoch has was elected as MP for Saffron Walden constituency in the 2017 general election and was re-elected in 2019. She is a former vice chair of the Conservative Party and former member of the Justice Select Committee and prior to her election as a Member of Parliament, she was a Conservative member of the London Assembly, acting as the spokesperson for the economy.