Kemi Badenoch, leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party, says Nigeria’s status as an oil-producing country has not translated into reliable electricity for its citizens.
Badenoch grew up in Nigeria before returning to the UK as a
teenager to continue her studies.
Asked in an interview with The Spectator about how her
upbringing in Nigeria shaped her political views, Badenoch said her experiences
have hardened her.
“My belief that we need to drill our oil and gas comes from
growing up in a country… Nigeria is an oil-producing country, never had
electricity,” she said.
“It is very easy to have resources under the ground, but
stupid public policy means that you can’t use it.”
She likened policies formulated by Ed Miliband, UK secretary
of state for energy security and net zero, to the leadership of Nigerian heads
of state before democracy.
“And I see quite a lot of what Ed Miliband is doing as being
very much like what the Nigerian military dictatorships were doing in the 80s
and 90s — ‘the government is going to take control, we know what’s best, we’re
going to redistribute’. Stupid ideas which eventually just bankrupt the
country,” she said.
Badenoch said she does not want Britain to become a
“third-world country” like Nigeria.
“Fundamentally, my views about how we should run our country
come from growing up in a place that was very poor. You grow up in a
third-world country and you look at why it is termed ‘third world,’ and I don’t
want that to happen here,” she said.
The politician added that the UK, alongside its history and
wealth, is always taken for granted, and called for a revival of “British
culture”.
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