Lagos-born Olukemi Olufunto Badenoch is currently eyeing history as she launched her bid to succeed the outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who resigned as the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party last week.
The New Diplomat had earlier reported that Johnson will hang on as PM till a successor is announced by the Tory.
Kemi Badenoch (nee Adegoke) was among several Ministers who resigned from the UK Cabinet to protest Prime Minister Johnson’s bad leadership last week.
A former UK junior education minister, Kemi, who was elected to represent Saffron Walden in 2017, has now put forward her proposal to emerge as the next British PM, joining several others who had already joined the race.
Kemi, 42, is former banker, who grew up in Nigeria, UK and US.
Her father had practiced as a doctor in London, while her mother was a university professor at the time she was born in 1980.
Kemi was brought back to Nigeria where she studied at the University of Lagos, but returned to the UK at the age of 16.
Before her foray into politics, she had degrees in Computer Systems Engineering and Law and worked in banking.
She got married in 2012 and she is a mother of two children.
“People are exhausted by platitudes and empty rhetoric. Loving our country, our people or our party is not enough,” Kemi wrote in an article published by The Times of UK, announcing her bid. “What’s missing is an intellectual grasp of what is required to run the country in an era of increased polarisation, protectionism and populism amplified by social media.”
