Presidential spokesman Daniel Bwala believes Kemi Badenoch’s scathing comments about Nigeria are targeted at gaining acceptance from her party members.
Badenoch recently said she does not want the UK to become like Nigeria where she claimed the government has failed.
But on Monday Bwala who is the Special Adviser to the President on Policy Communications said the UK Conservative Party leader’s comment was to gain the favour of her party.
“The only problem we have with Kemi, I think, is the rhetoric because Kemi belongs to the right base in the United Kingdom which is what you see in this populism around the world that you can deepen on your support system if you can feed off of the anger of the people,” Bwala said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.
“And so she’s building a rhetoric of denigrating Nigeria, demarketing in Nigeria, so she can probably win the acceptance or acceptation of the rights in her party. And that to me is counterproductive because if you look at Rishi Sunak, he is also of Indian origin. There has been this issue of gang rape in India. He has never used that as a weapon to promote what he believed to be a departure from what is likely to be believed as hereditary or history of the Indian people, but she has always denigrated Nigeria.”
The presidential spokesman, however, dismissed fears that Badenoch’s remarks about Nigeria will affect the country’s efforts to bring investors.
“I don’t think it would have an effect because she’s not the government in power. Usually, these international relationships or collaborations are dealings between governments. Because she’s not the government in power, it will not have any effect,” he said.
“Secondly, because she’s a Nigerian, investors will be smart enough to access what she’s saying, whether it is born out of rhetoric.”
