Deborah Akinyosoye
The Nigerian Presidency has refuted claims made by Kemi Badenoch, leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party, regarding the country’s citizenship laws. Badenoch had stated during a Sunday interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that, as a woman, she could not pass Nigerian citizenship to her children, citing it as an example of stricter immigration rules in contrast to those of the UK.
While criticising what she called the UK’s overly permissive immigration policies, Badenoch claimed that her children were ineligible for Nigerian citizenship because she isn’t married to a Nigerian man.
In response, President Bola Tinubu’s Special Assistant on Social Media, Dada Olusegun, strongly challenged Badenoch’s assertions. In a post shared via his (formerly Twitter) handle on Monday, Olusegun accused her of persistently spreading falsehoods about Nigeria.
“Aunty @KemiBadenoch, why do you continue to lie against your motherland?” Olusegun wrote. “Why this persistent, dangerous, and desperate effort to smear Nigeria? Chapter 3, Section 25 (1)(c) of the 1999 Constitution clearly states that if a Nigerian woman is a citizen by birth, her children, whether born at home or abroad, automatically acquire Nigerian citizenship by descent.
“There is no need for registration or naturalisation for those children to become citizens,” he concluded.