The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, recently went viral over her comments on the perfidy of sandwiches and “moist bread” in an interview with the Spectator. The comment was met with glee, quips and comedic clapbacks from political rivals. Yet a few lines down in the exact same interview, Badenoch made comments, less noticed, more inflammatory, that should be eye-wateringly beneath the holder of the office of Leader of His Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition.

“I find it interesting that everybody defines me as being Nigerian,” she said. “I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity [Yoruba]. That’s what I really am. I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where the Islamism is, those were our ethnic enemies and yet you end up being lumped in with those people.”

As someone of British-Nigerian origins myself, I can ignore the blood, soil and pounded yam approach to Yoruba sectarianism (which is a long way from the Nigerians for Kemi campaign she desperately pulled together when running for a diverse London seat in 2010). I’ll put aside the fact that she conveniently didn’t mention who did that “lumping” at gunpoint (that is, Britain). But it does occur that this “ethnic enemies” rhetoric sits a bit too easily in Hutu v Tutsi territory, or Biafra (Nigerian civil war) territory. It is the exact sort of rhetoric that leads to major conflicts in fragile yet highly diverse nations such as Nigeria, whose maps were drawn by colonialists. Making matters worse, it offers not even an iota of sympathy for the........

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