Barely two years after Governor of Imo State, then Owelle Rochas Okorocha’s appointment of a Commissioner for Happiness and Couples’ Fulfillment in his South Eastern state of Nigeria was vehemently resisted and laughed off by Nigerians, the newly elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Mr. Boris Johnson, has appointed a Nigerian citizen from South West geopolitical zone as the Queen’s country Children and Families Minister.
The new British minister, Olukemi Olufunto Badenoch, aged 39, was said to have been appointed as part of Johnson’s government reshuffle.
Badenoch is a British Conservative politician and Member of Parliament (MP) for Saffron Walden.
She was born in Wimbledon, London to Nigerian parents. Her childhood was spent in Lagos and the United States. She moved to the United Kingdom at the age of 16. She has been the MP for Saffron Walden since 2017 after replacing Nadhim Zawahi.
She once told MPs in Parliament about her own experiences of poverty and how she used to do her homework by candlelight.
A software and IT engineer, Badenoch studied systems engineering at Sussex University and also has a law degree. She has worked in the banking sector for Coutts and RBS and is a mother of two.
Tweeting about her appointment, Badenoch @KemiBadenoch posted on 29 July: “Thank you for all good wishes and kind messages of support received. I also look forward to working not just with @Conservatives colleagues but cross-party and grateful for the warm welcome from @TracyBrabin and @Steve ReedMP who no doubt will be keeping me on my toes!”
The minister’s responsibilities include early years policy, including inspection and regulation. Her portfolio includes delivery of 30 hours free childcare offer, special educational needs including high needs funding, safeguarding in schools and disadvantaged pupils – including pupil premium and pupil premium plus.
In her 2017 maiden speech as MP, the daughter of a GP and a physiology professor, described the vote for Brexit as “the greatest ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom”.
But home in Nigeria, from where the new British Minister of Children and Families hailed, Governor Rochas Okorocha now a serving Senator’s appointment of Mrs Ogechi Ololo as Commissioner for Happiness and Couples’ Fulfillment was laughed off, not only in his Imo State community but also across the country with the mainstream media awash with those splashes of laughters, a disappointed respondent told The DEFENDER while reacting to the cheering news of Nigerian appointed as Children and Families Minister in the UK.
According to the respondent, “I just believe that one day God will save us from the evils of ourselves to ourselves in Nigeria. This is Britain, a white man’s land and known racist country. But here we are with them now appointing a black woman of Nigeria’s heart as Minister in their all-important cabinet. This must be a great lesson to us in Nigeria. Don’t forget that that Nigerian must have first been elected as a member of parliament before becoming a minister,” he noted.
He added that, “I am particularly disappointed that the same people who had laughed off Okorocha’s appointment of a Commissioner for Happiness and Couples’ Fulfillment in Nigeria, wondering how Happiness and Couples deserve to have a ministry in charge, are the same people now applauding a Minister appointed to be in charge of Children and Families in UK.
“What is now the difference between what Okorocha did, which we condemned and refused, even as Igbo people, to support and encourage, and what Boris Johnson of Britain has now done to our own in his country?
“We have a long way to go except we truly embrace the ongoing wind of change that is blowing across the country telling us front, right, left and centre to stop ethnic and religious sentiment for realistic peace, unity and development to happen in our public and private lives. Else, ours will be a sorry case that will end in doom.”
He however congratulated the Nigerian lady appointed as British Minister of Children and Families and prayed for Nigeria and Nigerians for better life that is achievable only by them changing the negative contents of their hearts to happen.
