Former Dulwich pupil says Farage told him: ‘That’s the way back to Africa’
[Guardian] Exclusive: Yinka Bankole says he felt compelled to speak out after Reform leader’s attempts to ‘dismiss’ hurt of alleged targets
A former Dulwich college pupil who claims a teenage Nigel Farage told him “that’s the way back to Africa” has said he felt compelled to speak out after the Reform leader’s attempt at “denying or dismissing” the hurt of his alleged targets.
Yinka Bankole, who claims he had just started at the school when a 17-year-old Farage singled him out for abuse, said he had decided to tell his story in full after watching the Reform leader’s press conference on Thursday.
Farage told reporters that he had never been racist or antisemitic with “malice”. Instead, he launched a tirade aimed at the BBC and ITV for questioning him about an ongoing Guardian investigation into allegations of past antisemitism and racism.
Citing television shows including Are You Being Served? and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, Farage accused the BBC, which he suggested he would boycott, of “double standards and hypocrisy”, and claimed ITV had a case to answer for airing the comedian Bernard Manning in the 1970s.
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Bankole continues, describing Farage’s behaviour when he was 9 and Farage would have been near 17 years of age. The story of this and repeated articles on this topic is that Farage was a nasty racist bully.
“It took him a while, I recall, but one day Farage, and at least one other, spotted me in the lower-school playground. He was about 17 years old.
“He towered over me. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked. Within seconds of offering my rather confused and sputtering answers, he had a clear response: ‘That’s the way back to Africa,’ with an accompanying hand gesture pointing towards a place far away.”
Bankole, 54, an engineer, said that once his “existence as a target was established”, Farage “would wait at the lower-school gate, where I was dropped off for school, so as to repeat the vulgarity”.
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