Miss World organisers announced last night that they were switching next month’s beauty contest to London in the wake of raging sectarian violence in Nigeria where the contest was to have been held on December 7.
More than 100 people have been killed and at least 500 seriously injured in clashes in the northern city of Kaduna, apparently sparked by a recent newspaper article which suggested that Islam’s founding prophet might have chosen a wife from among the contestants.
The decision to move the contest to London came late last night with contestants from more than 90 countries holed up in a hotel in the capital, Abuja, and passions aroused by the kitsch competition showing no sign of abating.
A representative for President Olusegun Obasanjo had earlier pleaded with competitors not to pull out.
”The contestants are not in any danger. They are being guarded by presidential security. Nigeria sees them as ambassadors for their countries,” she said.
But such assuaging comments belied the fact that rioting continued for a third day in protest at the contest which had been scheduled to be held in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on December 7.
Furious Muslim mobs torched a newspaper office in Kaduna on Wednesday, then turned on their Christian neighbours, burning at least four churches, and stabbing, clubbing and burning bystanders thought to be Christian.
Yesterday, gangs of Christian youths retaliated, burning mosques and houses and cars owned by the Muslim majority, lighting barricades of tyres across Kaduna’s predominantly Christian suburbs. Crowds of Muslims manned barricades of their own, shouting ”Allahu Akhbar” (God is most great), ”down with beauty” and ”Miss World is sin”.
Gunfire echoed and plumes of black smoke rose above a city where thousands have already died in two years of intermittent religious violence.
According to the Red Cross, the latest death toll of 105 people was almost certain to rise. ”The 105 are identifiable deaths,” said Emmanuel Ijewere, president of the Nigerian Red Cross.
”But there are some houses that have not been entered. It is possible that there are injured in these houses.”
Stella Din, a representative for Miss World, gave assurances that all the contestants were safe inside their hotel.
”We regret these incidents, but this is not the fault of Miss World. It is the result of irresponsible journalism,” she said. ”The show definitely will go on.”
But later there was a change of heart and the organisers said in a statement: ”Miss World Organisation and Silver Bird Productions Limited, organisers of the 2002 Miss World pageant, have decided to move the grand finale to London, England.
”This decision was taken after careful consideration of all the issues involved and in the overall interests of Nigeria and the contestants participating in this year’s edition.”
Din said the London pageant would take place on December 7, the same date as had been originally scheduled for the event in Nigeria.
Earlier yesterday, in an attempt to dampen emotions, President Obasanjo had also blamed the trouble on ”irresponsible journalism”, branding as ”blashphemous” an article in the Lagos-based newspaper ThisDay which appeared to have sparked the riots.
The article, written by a Christian journalist, Isioma Daniel, and published on Saturday, imagined what the Prophet Mohammed would have thought of the modern Miss World. ”What would Mohammed think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them.”
The paper printed a small apology in its next issue and a longer retraction on Thursday, blaming a computer error for its editor’s failure to spike the offending article. ”To all our Muslim brothers and sisters,” the apology began, ”we are sorry that the portrayal of the Holy Prophet Mohammed in a commentary written by one of our staff was not only unjustified, but utterly provocative.”
Nigeria’s decision to host Miss World had widened a deep fissure between the mostly-Muslim north and Christian south. While many southern Nigerians rejoiced at the news, Muslim clerics accused the pageant of promoting indecency and sexual promiscuity and objected to it being held during Ramadan.
”It’s all about commercial sex trading,” said Huseyn Zakaria, a Muslim cleric in Abuja. ”It’s about nudity, it’s about immorality, it’s about exposing the youngsters of the community to a sex hazard.”
The Nigerian Afro-beat star Femi Kuti said he was disgusted by the pageant. ”Nigeria has bigger problems than bringing Miss World to Nigeria,” he told the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme.
”We have no light, no water, millions of children walk around the streets homeless, their parents can’t feed them. What is the benefit to the people of Africa? I’m not surprised if the people revolt. They have my total support.”
Religious tensions have been raised in Nigeria by three years of flickering sectarian violence since the end of military rule. Aspiring politicians, seeking increased regional autonomy, have been blamed for inciting much of the killing.
In particular, international attention has focused on the sharia courts which have spread across northern Nigeria during this time, and have sentenced several women to death by stoning.
Some beauty queens had already boycotted Miss World in protest at three sentences of stoning handed to unmarried mothers. The remaining contestants had been advised not to leave Abuja.
Several hundred soldiers and riot police were deployed across Kaduna yesterday in a vain attempt to enforce a 24-hour curfew.
The Nigerian government is engaged in an intensifying tussle with the northern regional governments over their attempts to impose Islamic, or sharia, law.
”The federal law takes precedence over individual or collective Muslim law,” said a foreign ministry spokesman.
But it is a sign of the central government’s nervousness that it has yet to challenge any of the stoning sentences in the supreme court for fear of inflaming religious tensions further. – Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001