Kemi Badenoch has said she does not see herself as Nigerian and no longer has a passport for the country.
The Conservative Party leader was born in the UK but grew up in Nigeria.
When the countryâs economy collapsed in the 1990s, her parents took advantage of her British passport to get her out, sending her at the age of 16 to live with a family friend in south London to continue her education.
She said she had not renewed her Nigerian passport in two decades in an interview with the Rosebud podcast.
âI have not renewed my Nigerian passport, I think, not since the early 2000s.
âI donât identify with it any more, most of my life has been in the UK and Iâve just never felt the need to.â
She said she had to get a visa to visit the country when her father died, which she described as a âbig fandangoâ.
âIâm Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there because of my parents⌠but by identity Iâm not really.
âI know the country very well, I have a lot of family there, and Iâm very interested in what happens there.
âBut home is where my now family is, and my now family is my children, itâs my husband and my brother and his children, in-laws. The Conservative party is very much part of my family â my extended family, I call it,â she said.
The North West Essex MP said her early experiences in Nigeria shaped her political outlook, including âwhy I donât like socialismâ.
âAnd I remember never quite feeling that I belonged there,â she added.
The Tory leader said the reason she returned to the UK as a teenager was a âa very sad oneâ.
âIt was that my parents thought: âThere is no future for you in this countryâ.â
She has not experienced racial prejudice in Britain âin any meaningful formâ, she said.
âI knew I was going to a place where I would look different to everybody, and I didnât think that that was odd,â she said.
âWhat I found actually quite interesting was that people didnât treat me differently, and itâs why Iâm so quick to defend the UK whenever there are accusations of racism.â
