Paul Mooney, the late great African-American comedian and one of the most insightful yet hilarious intellectuals on matters of race, once quipped that every “racially aggrieved” person once deceased returns in another body to collect what is owed to them. Illustrating the point he suggested that the first Black Oscar winner, Hattie McDaniel (perhaps most famous for playing Mammy in Gone With the Wind), had returned to the world as Oprah Winfrey. If Mooney’s thesis is to be believed, there is amusement to be had guessing which figure from history has returned to us in the form of a newly “ex-Nigerian” Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative party
Appearing on a podcast last week, Badenoch said that she no longer identifies as Nigerian. This was bizarre even by Badenochian standards. Her words: “I don’t identify with it [Nigeria] any more. Most of my life has been in the UK …” She went further: “I’m Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there because of my parents … but by identity, I’m not really.”
