Political reporter
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has told the BBC how she stood in an examination and accused a fellow disciple of cheating, which was expelled from the school.
In a comprehensive interview with Amol Rajan, Tory leaders say about how his childhood in Nigeria shaped his politics and character.
Speaking about her hatred to the rules, she said that she was “about 14 or 15” when she was standing in an exam and said “she is cheating, she is what is doing it ‘, and that boy is over”.
He said: “I was not praised. I was a relatively popular child in school, and people said ‘Why did you do this, why would you do this?’
“I said” because he was doing wrong ‘. “
Somewhere else in the interview, she talks about how she lost her faith in God, but still considers herself a “cultural Christian” and about the lack of ambition was done by some teachers in the UK in the 1990s for black children.
Badenoch was born in London in 1980, but he grew up in Nigeria and America, where his mother gave a lecture.
She returned to Britain when she was 16 years old to live with a family friend due to the deteriorating political and economic situation in Nigeria and tells Rajan, because she wanted to be in London “really, actually, actually”.
Last week, he said he was no longer known as Nigerian – a comment that received a strong response in Nigeria, in which many political figures continuously accuse him of depicting the country in poor light.
Badenoch studied for his A-Level at a college in South London while working at McDonald’s restaurant and other places.
In her interview, she speaks of “poverty of low expectations”, she says that she was facing college in London when she says that black children were extended to professional qualifications rather than A-Level, and discouraged to apply for Oxford and Cambridge.
Badenoch insisted that it was not all its teachers who had displayed these attitudes and did not think they were racists, but thought that they were “helpful” by reducing expectations.
The BBC spoke to the Principal of Badenoch College at that time, who said the college was “trying to do the best for every individual student regardless of its background” and the Tory leader’s comment on low expectations “Just seems like a rhetoric to strengthen his political story”.
When it was kept for him by Rajan, Badenoch stressed that this is not just political rhetoric, and “If people deny that these things happen, we are never going to fix it”.
He argued that this was not just an issue for black children, saying: “This is a problem with a lot of white working class children where the teacher says, ‘Okay, you come from the family where no one really wants to do anything. We are not going to push you. It is very difficult. It is not worth it.’
“This is not correct.”
‘I rejected God’
Badenoch completed his degree in Computer Engineering at Sussex University and worked in Finance and IT before entering politics. She married banker Hamish Badenoch in 2012, and has three children.
In her BBC interview, she speaks about how proud of her GP father, Fammy Edgok, when she became an MP in 2017.
When he was dying from a brain tumor in 2022, Badenoca says: “He cried because he knew that he was dying and he said, ‘I know you are going to go all the way, and I know I am not going to see it’ and it was really sad.”
The Austrian man also speaks about losing his faith in God after seeing the coverage of Joseph Fritzal’s arrest, who made his daughter captive for 24 years and made it under his house in a dungeon.
Badenoch, whose maternal grandfather was a Methodist minister, said: “I could not stop reading this story. And I read his account, how he prayed every day to save him.
“And I thought, I was praying for all kinds of stupid things and I was responding to my prayers. I was praying for a good grade, my hair should grow for a long time, and I would pray for just to come on the bus so that I don’t miss anything.
“This is so, why those prayers were answered, not the prayer of this woman? And it was as if someone had blown the candle.”
But he said: “I rejected God, not Christianity. So I will still define myself as a cultural Christian.”
Since Badenoch became a leader in November last year, Conservatives lost control of 10 local authorities for Nigel Faraz’s reform UK, and has moved to third or fourth position in the National Opinion Poll.
She reiterated her petition for “patience”, saying that she knew that “the leader of the opposition job becomes difficult before”.
“I am someone that people have always tried to write, and I have always been successful, and I am confident that I can do this with the Conservative Party”.
Amol Rajan Interview: Kemi Badenoch, Thursday 8 August at 7 pm on BBC 2 – and iPlayer
