Kemi Badenoch recounts ‘prison-like’ boarding school life in Nigeria

UK Conservative Party leader and opposition head, Kemi Badenoch, has spoken candidly about the difficult chapters of her early life in Nigeria, including what she described as a “prison-like” experience at a Federal Government Girls’ College in Sagamu.

In a reflective interview recorded in Westminster, the MP for Saffron Walden recounted her upbringing in Lagos above her father’s medical clinic, her school days in Nigeria, and the transcontinental journey that took her through the U.S. and eventually to political prominence in the UK.

Badenoch, 45, shared raw details from her time at the Sagamu boarding school, where she was enrolled at the age of 11. She described a grim environment with overcrowded dormitories, 20 to 30 girls packed into rooms within a 300-student facility. With no running water, students had to fetch buckets for bathing, and lawn maintenance was done manually using machetes.

The future MP recalled losing significant weight due to poor nutrition and her aversion to certain foods, especially fish, often bartering her meals for books. Despite these hardships, she credits the experience with shaping her resilience and outlook.

Kemi’s fondest memory in Nigeria

“So my very first memory, and I actually had to sit down and think about this because I couldn’t remember what my first memory was. But thinking and thinking, my earliest memory was actually my fourth birthday, which was January 1984. And I remember it because I always wanted to know when my birthday was.

“So my dad says, and he came up to me that morning and he said, today is your birthday. Because I’d been asking, when is my birthday? When is my birthday? When is my birthday? Is it my birthday? I was obsessed with birthdays. And I remember my fourth birthday because I had a Barbie cake.

“So I had, uniquely in those days, in the early 80s, I had a brown Barbie, and she had this big dress, which was the cake, the skirt was the cake. And I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. So this is happening in Lagos, this is 1984.”

She said Lagos being the capital of Nigeria. Then it was.

“And it was in our flat above my dad’s clinic. My dad was a doctor. And I woke up, as I had done every day saying, is it my birthday today? And he said, today’s your birthday.

“Well, my mum is still alive. My dad sadly passed away three years ago. My mum is Professor Fayi Adegoke.

“And she is still, despite being 75, a lecturer of physiology at university. So she teaches medical students.”

How Kemi Badenock’s parents met

“My dad was in a year of university where you’ve graduated, but you’re still training to be a doctor. And shehad started her first year sort of teaching at the medical school. And that’s how they met.

“Well, I’ve seen lots of pictures. And they were, they were very cool.

“I’ve seen their graduation pictures. And it was, you know, 70s. And it was all the cool 70s culture.

“Very, very Western.Remember, this is in the days of sort of the ending of the British Empire. They’ve all had, you know, teachers from England and Scotland, and so much of the culture of the UK is, is there.

“So it’s all very sort of cool, funky, jazz, and everyone, you know, driving around in cars, smoking, drinking, listening to disco. So they’re very into disco. They were into what I call old school R&B,” She said.

Born in Wimbledon but raised in Lagos

When asked why she was born in Wimbledon when she was clearly brought up in Lagos, she explained that the doctor who helped her mother conceive was based in Wimbledon.

“So my parents got married in 1977. And I’m born January 1980. And you can imagine, you know, in an African society, why haven’t you had any children yet? And the doctors in the, in the country were just stumped.

“We don’t know why you haven’t had any, any children yet. And remember, this was in the days when Nigeria was a very wealthy country, you know, there’s an oil boom, there’s lots of money sloshing around. So we were very comfortable because my dad was a doctor to the oil companies.

“And so they were travelling, you know, every year, they’d stay in Knightsbridge, and they only shopped at Harrods. It was, it was such a different life from what they ended up having 20 years later, when all the socialist policies have come in, and everything’s terrible. So my mother and her friends were all, you know, they had private doctors, and one of them had recommended a man called Mr. Roberts, because he was a surgeon.

“So he was Mr. Roberts. And Mr. Roberts made, made me. And he also made my brother as well.

“So that’s why we were born. Well, my parents made me. He facilitated it.Yes, yes, he helped it along the way.

“He facilitated it. And I will always be grateful because without him, I wouldn’t have been born. And it later, well, it transpired that what my mother had was endometriosis, which she told me, at the time, people said, oh, it doesn’t, it’s not an African thing.

“It’s something that happens to Europeans. And her doctor said that this is something that is unique to Europeans. We don’t, we don’t see this in the, in the African population.”