Although she describes herself essentially as “a first-generation immigrant”, Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke, as she was christened, was born in Wimbledon. Her mother had come here because she wanted to give birth safely in a British private maternity hospital and quickly returned to Lagos. Mrs Badenoch’s father, Femi Adegoke, who died in January, was a doctor and her mother Feyi was a physiology lecturer (a job which also took the family to the US for a period), meaning the family was largely part of the upper part of Nigeria. middle class. Yemi Osinbajo, the current vice president of Nigeria, is a first cousin just removed. However, he has said that “being middle class in Nigeria means not having running water or electricity, sometimes taking your own chair to school”, as well as a knife for protection. When she was 16, with Nigeria under military dictatorship and universities closed, her father, whose savings had been nearly wiped out in a currency crash, used what he had left to buy her a plane ticket and sent her to London with £100 in her pocket. He told her that her future was in her own hands, because “90 percent of the things that happen to you belong to you and only 10 percent to other people.”
