Beauty queens from more than 80 nations jetted into Nigeria to compete in the Miss World pageant, defying calls for a boycott to protest death-by-stoning sentences imposed on Nigerian Muslim women for having sex outside marriage.
Several entrants did not show up for the charter flight that ferried the contestants from London to the West African nation’s capital, Abuja. Miss World organisers could not immediately explain the no-shows, saying only that they hoped the others would arrive before the pageant finale on December 7.
”Some people say there is a boycott. Is there a boycott? There isn’t one,” insisted Ben Murray-Bruce, director-general of the Nigeria Television Authority, the pageant’s official broadcaster. Last year 96 nations were represented in the pageant. Organisers said they expected 92 participants this year, including four latecomers. Journalists counted more than 80 contestants disembarking the plane in Abuja. Absent this time were beauty queens from Costa Rica, Denmark, Switzerland, South Africa and Panama — who all previously indicated they would boycott the pageant. Miss Sri Lanka also didn’t arrive, although organisers said she was expected later in the week.
Wearing casual clothing beneath green sashes emblazoned with their nationality, the Miss World aspirants who arrived in sweltering Abuja were greeted by Nigerian children clad in traditional cloth and carrying flowers. Performers sang Nigerian music as others danced and drummed.
”We’re so happy to be here,” Miss World president Julia Morley said. ”We are here to put Nigeria on the map of international beauty.”
The pageant is being billed by Nigeria’s government as the highest-profile international event ever to be staged in Africa’s most populous nation. After Nigerian Islamic courts sentenced four people to death by stoning for the offenses of extramarital sex and rape, at least nine nations -Panama, Costa Rica, Spain, France, Kenya, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland and South Africa — threatened to boycott to pressurise Nigeria’s government to rescind the sentences. Pageant organisers chose replacements for the Belgian and French no-shows. In an apparent turnaround, Kenya’s Miss World affiliate sent a contestant on Monday after earlier indicating it would not.
In a recent public relations blitz, Nigerian government officials insisted they will not permit the stoning sentences to be carried out, yet refused to intervene directly to avoid alienating Muslim voters ahead of elections next year.
”You have no fears in this country. Your safety is guaranteed. And I assure you, no Nigerian has been stoned or will be stoned,” Dubem Onyia, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, said on Monday to the newly arrived beauty queens, who clapped politely in reply. ”Relax and enjoy yourselves.”
At least one of those condemned to a stoning death,
Amina Lawal, a 31-year-old single mother convicted in March, is awaiting a second appeal by a higher Islamic court.
Nigerian Muslim fundamentalist groups have also protested against the pageant, prompting organisers to delay the event by more than a week until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Officials in four majority Muslim states — Sokoto, Zamfara, Kebbi and Yobe — said on Monday that local television and radio broadcasters in their states were forbidden from broadcasting the pageant.
Sadiu Aliu, an official of Mahiba, a Nigerian Muslim fundamentalist group in the northern city of Gusau, said his group was planning a month of ”black prayers” to spread ”plagues of curses and bad luck” on Miss World organisers and participants, whom Aliu accused of ”spreading immorality.”
After a send-off banquet in London last weekend that Britain’s Prince Edward decided to boycott, Miss World contestants were expected to begin a month of photo shoots and other activities on Tuesday in the southeastern jungles of Cross Rivers state.
Miss World, which competes for global television audiences with Miss Universe, is highly popular in Asia and parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South America. The contest has gained one first time entrant this year — Vietnam, whose ruling Communist Party once disparaged beauty contests as a sign of capitalist decadence. – Sapa-AP