UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has called for a rethink of British immigration laws, saying it is “too easy” for migrants to acquire citizenship in the UK, while citing the example of Nigeria among countries with difficult citizenship laws, especially for women who wish to transfer citizenship to their children.
Badenoch’s latest call for a tougher immigration measure comes on top of the recently released UK immigration white paper, considered by immigrants to be stringent enough. The white paper had increased the eligibility for UK citizenship from five to ten years of staying in the UK for most immigrants.
But speaking during an interview on Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, monitored by Pan-Atlantic Kompass, Sunday, Kemi Badenoch said that Britain’s tolerance and liberalism are being abused by people who neither understand nor uphold the values the UK stands for.
“It’s virtually impossible to get Nigerian citizenship,” Kemi Badenoch said. “I have that citizenship by virtue of my parents. I can’t give it to my children because I’m a woman. Yet loads of Nigerians come to the UK, stay for a relatively brief period of time, and acquire British citizenship. It’s been too easy—it’s basically a conveyor belt.”
Are Kemi Badenoch’s Claims Correct on Nigerian Citizenship?
Whereas Kemi Badenoch is seen as an immigration hardliner in Nigeria, where she originally hails from, checks by this digital magazine corroborate her claim about the difficulty Nigerian women often experience while trying to transfer citizenship.
According to the Nigerian Constitution (1999), under Section 25–27, citizenship by birth is determined mainly through paternal descent. This makes it impossible for women to independently transfer citizenship to their children if the father is not Nigerian.
Also, Nigerian women who marry non-Nigerian cannot transfer citizenship to their husband, something that rights advocates often criticize as gender gap in the Nigerian citizenship law. Groups are currently calling for a review to rewrite that section of the law amid the ongoing talks bordering on the Nigerian constitutional review.
Kemi Badenoch – The UK Immigration Hardliner Hits Out Again
As leader of the UK Conservative Party, Badenoch has made curbing mass migration to the UK a central part of her political messaging. She said the Conservative party under her leadership has already taken steps to tighten citizenship rules and make the system more merit-based.
Nowadays, it appears that whenever Kemi Badenoch speaks, she is bound to incur the wrath of many Nigerians and Africans trying to japa (a Nigerian colloquial term meaning “to flee,” in Badenoch’s native Yoruba language), thanks to her immigration stance. Many japa hopefuls consider it extreme. Yet it fits neatly into her political branding for the Conservatives, who have been lagging in the polls, behind the Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party. Badenoch’s Conservative party, alternatively known as the Tories, lost power in July 2024 to the incumbent Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“We want people who come to our country to be net contributors, not people who immigrate and then need welfare, need social housing,” she said. “That’s not right, because they haven’t paid into the system.”
Badenoch argued that immigration is not just about numbers, but about shared values and integration. “I often say that numbers matter,” she told CNN’s Zakaria, “but culture matters more.”
“There’s something people are coming to the UK to get—our system, our Enlightenment values, equality under the law, freedom of speech, women’s rights, the rule of law. That’s what has made us a successful country,” she said. “But if you have large numbers of people who don’t believe in those things, your country changes.”
She added that “not all cultures are equal,” stating that societies where child marriage is common or where women are treated as lesser human beings are not compatible with Britain’s values.
Kemi Badenoch also pointed to a recent grooming gang scandal involving individuals from a remote region in Pakistan. She said the abuse was tied to cultural isolation and a refusal to integrate.
“They weren’t even representative of most Pakistanis,” according to her adding that “They came from a very detached, peasant farming background, and the people who were harmed were women and children.”
She claimed that Britain’s tolerance is being exploited by people who manipulate the asylum system, including those who pretend to convert to Christianity or claim to be gay to avoid deportation.
“And I talk about how we are allowing our tolerance to be exploited. We have people pretending, for instance, to be homosexual so that they can claim asylum, and then they go on to get married and have children. They’re abusing the laws that we have. We have people who go through false conversions. They come to the parish priests, they’re very excited.
“Oh, these Muslims want to convert to Christianity. They convert so that they can claim asylum and say, if I went back to my country, I’d be persecuted.
Kemi Badenoch in Her Own Words
She continued: “This is exploitation of a system that was not designed for this sort of thing. You have to be honest about that.
“There are many people who come to our country, to the UK, who do things that would not be acceptable in their countries.
“It’s virtually impossible, for example, to get Nigerian citizenship. I have that citizenship by virtue of my parents. I can’t give it to my children because I’m a woman.
Yet, loads of Nigerians come to the UK, stay for a relatively brief period of time acquire British citizenship. We need to stop being naive, and that’s why, under my leadership, we now have policies to make it a lot harder to just get British citizenship.
It’s been too easy. It’s basically a conveyor belt. We want people who come to our country to be net contributors, not people who will immigrate and then need welfare, need social housing.
That’s not right, because they haven’t paid into the system. So there is a lot that I’m changing on policy that is suitable for the times we live in.
“We can get away with these things before the era of mass travel, before mobile phones, before small boat crossings. There is the global mass migration, which we are seeing. That’s very destabilizing. They didn’t have that in the 80s, the 70s, and the 90s. We need rules that work for today,” Kemi Badenoch concluded.
