A Nigerian British lawmaker, Kemi Badenoch is among nine candidates in the race to succeed Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Badenoch resigned as equalities minister last Wednesday in the gale of cabinet ministers’ resignations that forced a reluctant Johnson to quit as the leader of the Conservative Party last Thursday.
Forty two-year-old Badenoch is one of the four female lawmakers in the race. Others are Junior Trade Secretary Penny Mordaunt; Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Attorney General Suella Braverman.
The male contestants are former chancellor of exchequer Rishi Sunak, regarded as the frontrunner; former health secretary Sajid Javid; Transport Secretary Grant Shapps; current Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi; former health and foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt and former British military officer who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat.
Only two women had been prime ministers in the UK: Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990) and Theresa May (2016–2019).
Badenoch, the member of parliament for Saffron Walden announced her bid for the British top job in an article published by the Times of London newspaper last Saturday, expressing the wish to run a “strong but limited government focused on the essentials.”
“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 wrote.
The former equalities minister also promised to run on a “smart and nimble centre-right vision.”
The race opened following the resignation of the Prime Minister Boris Johnson as the leader of the Conservative Party last Thursday. Johnson will stay on while the party elects a member of parliament who will replace him as the party leader and prime minister.
Although Johnson will quit office, the country will not head to the polls until next year. The Conservative Party that won the last parliamentary election will produce the new prime minister, even as the main opposition Labour Party and others are demanding a new election.
A small committee of Conservative MPs known as the 1922 Committee sets the rule for the party in the parliament. The committee members will meet on Monday and announce the timetable for the contest that will produce the new prime minister from among the 359 Conservative lawmakers.
Nominations will close on Tuesday evening, followed by rounds of voting to reduce the candidates to a final two by July 21.
According to Wikipedia, “Badenoch was born in 1980 in Wimbledon, London, to Femi and Feyi Adegoke. Her father was a GP (medical doctor) and her mother is a professor of physiology. Badenoch’s childhood included time living in the United States (where her mother lectured) and Lagos, Nigeria. Whilst in Nigeria she attended the fee-
paying the International School University of Lagos and describes herself as a middle-class Yoruba school girl.
“Badenoch holds British citizenship owing to her birth in the United Kingdom. She returned to the UK at the age of 16 to live with a friend of her mother’s due to the deteriorating political and economic situation in Nigeria which impacted her family. She obtained A Levels from Phoenix College, a former further education college in Morden, London, while working at a branch of McDonald’s.
“After studying Computer Systems Engineering at the University of Sussex, Badenoch worked as a software engineer at Logica. 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.
“In 2012, Badenoch unsuccessfully contested a seat on the London Assembly. Three years later, she was selected as a London Assembly member. Badenoch supported Brexit in the 2016 referendum on EU membership. She was elected for Saffron Walden at the 2017 general election. “After Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in July 2019, Badenoch was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families. In the February 2020 reshuffle, she was appointed Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Equalities. In September 2021,
she was promoted to Minister of State for Equalities and appointed Minister of State for Local Government, Faith and Communities.”
