Kemi Badenoch reveals she watched lynch mobs kill people when she was a child in Nigeria

DAILYMAIL.COM • 3h ago

By NOOR QURASHI, NEWS REPORTER 21:49 11 Oct 2026, updated 22:12 11 Oct 2026

Kemi Badenoch has revealed she witnessed at least two people being lynched while living in Nigeria as a child.

The Conservative leader of the opposition said she saw one victim committing the crime before being beaten to death and the other person ‘just being killed’.

Speaking at the Cliveden Literary Festival over the weekend, Ms Badenoch said the formative experiences had taught her the importance of standing up to online cancel culture.

She said: ‘I don’t think people understand just how much my childhood impacts the way that I think. I saw real lynch mobs. I saw people killed.

‘Two, at least, certainly come to mind. One where I actually saw the crime, and the person beaten to death, and the other one where I just saw the lynching.’

Ms Badenoch was born in the UK but spent most of her childhood in Nigeria in the 1980s and 1990s.

The 46-year-old made comparisons between the lynching prevalent in the country at the time and online cancel culture.

She said: ‘It’s a group activity, the hive mind takes over, and it’s fear of the mob. What has happened is that when new ideas come in, where you have militant people behind them who are very happy to use mob tactics – whether it’s on social media or in real life – many people are afraid and they don’t want to speak up.’

Ms Badenoch made the comments during a discussion about ‘ideological capture’ in British institutions.

She praised Harry Potter author JK Rowling – a vocal critic of trans rights activists – as well as Britain’s ‘strictest headmistress’ Katharine Birbalsingh.

‘You need people like that who will use all of the tools that are available in our law.

‘It’s why I love people like JK Rowling, who know they cannot be cancelled and they use their status and their power to protect other people,’ she said.

Ms Badenoch also expanded on her Conservative party conference speech in which she had spoken about her children’s identity and ethnicity – who she shares with Hamish Badenoch.

She said: ‘What I think is dangerous is when people start telling others what their identity is. Ethnicity and ancestry is a spectrum, unlike sex and gender.

‘My husband and I are male and female, our children are not half-male, half-female.’

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