Preliminary thoughts on Kemi Badenoch set the record straight, makes it clear: “I am Yoruba"
Cornelius Hamelberg
Preliminary thoughts on Kemi Badenoch set the record straight, makes it clear: “I am Yoruba"
It’s one of the last things that I was thinking about before I fell asleep last night and woke of with these words on my lips : “Mama’s homemade marmalade “
Dear tribe, ethnicity, race and colour-conscious gentle men and gentle ladies of Nigeria, please refrain from running to any unsavoury, hasty or premature conclusions.
It’s cultural; it’s all about culture and values, really.
When the cosmopolitan Kemi, Kemi Badenoch says I am Yoruba , asserts positively “I am Yoruba”, which she is, before God and man, she is telling the undeniable Gospel Truth
So, my dear people, what’s wrong with that ?
She could have burst into song, not Song of Lawino, but the song of Oduduwa, or sung some exquisite Hebrew Poetry starting with verse 5 of Shir Hashirim - Song of Songs which begins, “I am black and beautiful , O daughters of Jerusalem! Like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon” She could have also done some boogaloo or juju dancing right there and then in the studio, starting with Say it loud I'm black and I'm proud in the spirit of Peter Tosh’s African and yer all would have been dancing in approval, along with her.
(In some circumstances John Patrick Johnson, my Scottish stepfather and very much culturally so ( kilts, Whiskey ( otherwise known as , Scotch ) , Jimmy Shand, Haggis which Professor Bernard Porter himself prepared and served us at this time of the year, a couple of years ago at a family dinner, apart from a marked Scottish accent ( Dundee) , J.P was sometimes quietly but fiercely Scottish and in that mode could sometimes show some irritation when addressed as, or mistaken for an Englishman. With Kemi’s husband Hamish Badenoch in mind I have tentatively come to the conclusion that for reasons best known to themselves, Scottish men love Yoruba women / Yoruba women fall for rugged Scottish men , and I intuit that under the benign influence of her hubby Hamish, Kemi has been inducted into counter-distinguishing the Scots from the English - and down the royal line, in pretty much the same way that the Igbos distinguish the Hausa from the Yoruba, and these days it should be understandable that the Fulani, the Hausa and the Yoruba Muslims want to take some distance to Boko Haram in precisely the same way that Middle Eastern and North African Muslims were and are , still anxious to distance themselves from 9-11 and Al-Qaeda. Muslims worldwide would also like to take exception from any of this : https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
Just as not all Nigerians are 419 Scammers , so too, not all Muslims are Terrorists, just ask the brilliant Femi Fani-Kayode , alias “Abdulateef”, to wit David Oluwafemi Adewunmi Abdulateef Fani-Kayode
( I mistook a Hindu for a Muslim , and accidentally asked him “ Are you a Muslim ?” I thought I had heard him speaking Urdu; he replied “ I am a Human being”
What if Kemi had said, “ I am the Bread of Life” or “I am the Light of the World “ , “ I am the Door”
“I am the Good Shepherd “, “I am the Resurrection and the Life” , “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life”, “I am the Vine “ or “ I am the Messiah”, “ I am the daughter of the Living God” , “ I am the next Prime Minister of Britain”, would you have picked up stones, to stone her ?
According to The Englishman by Eliza Cook,
“For a glorious charter, deny it who can,
Is breathed in the words, " I'm an Englishman. "
To tell you the truth, I feel a little ill at ease about getting involved in this kind of discussion, if the wannabe critics want to pander to the Oyibo's image of the African ( at best their image of the Noble Savage, who is at least mentally well equipped, if not liberally endowed with quantities of generosity of spirit and perhaps a love of all mankind, infused in him or her, through the civilising mission of missionary Christianity, etc etc… but, If Kemi after serious reflection is still adamant about distancing herself from any geographical section of Nigeria or of Great Britain ( the amalgamation of Scotland, England and Wales) how serious is she about becoming the first Yoruba Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ?
Can you imagine Peter Obi dashing all hopes of ever being elected President of Nigeria, if next time around he goes on the campaign trail with the message,” I am a Biafran”?
Of course, speaking of nationality, since she’s British and not Nigerian, how could she possibly say that she is “ Nigerian”?
Can you imagine what would have been the blowback if Barack Obama had said that he was “Kenyan” or “ I am Luo” ?
However , this self identification “ I am Yoruba” is going to come back and bite her , because there are more than a few blue-blooded British to the bootstraps who are going to say what they are already feeling, that Yoruba is not British, and that they don’t want the next Prime Minister of the UK to be someone who says,” I am Yoruba”
I thank the Almighty that it was at this point that I called Walking Encyclopaedia Baba Kadiri this evening, chatted for 45 minutes, as a result of which, with the context and history that he provided and with such clarity, I can once again testify that KNOWLEDGE is KING and that with my new understanding of the matter, Kemi’s February visit to Nigeria as the UK’s Minister of Trade, what is being reported in fact being a direct response to the usually affable V-P Shettima who in my opinion , on this occasion is the villain of the piece, -one of the villains of the piece, most of what I have just written should be be radically altered in my next instalment on this issue, which, by way of explanation, should follow shortly….
King Sunny Ade: Ja Funmi
Dr. Oohay
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