I Was Rendered Homeless After Participating In ‘Most Beautiful Girl In Nigeria’ Pageant – Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, has stated that she almost abandoned her law programme at the University of Nigeria when she started making money as a beauty queen.

Speaking at the Nigerian Women’s Day on the sidelines of the 69th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Ojukwu emphasized the importance of education in every woman’s life.

She stated that she did not allow her privileged background to distract her as a young lady.

Ojukwu explained that she was homeless for one month after participating in the Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria pageantry because her father was furious with her.

Ojukwu said, “I started off really as a young girl wanting to see the world. I remember sitting in the common room with other young girls always in those days, we would be watching top of the box, the music videos, Miss World, Miss Universe, and always quite impressed with the exotic backdrops more than anything. I just wanted to travel and see the world, and what was the best way of doing that, if not going into a pageant? So, I started my journey of going first into a certain pageant, which I won but as a student I couldn’t take the offer that came which included a one-year modelling contract in Tokyo. Of course, my parents didn’t know. They didn’t send me to school to go and take part in a pageant, so, I had to give that up. Until when I now took part in the Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria, which rendered me homeless for one month because naturally African fathers, my father was livid with rage. But I guess after I had won other pageantries like Miss Africa, Miss Intercontinental and so forth, he had to come to terms with it.

“But the point I’m making is this, one of the hardest things is, when you start earning money quite early, the biggest temptation would be to leave school. By the time I was earning my own money, I was a law student living in the hostel with about six other students with no water, nothing, and then, going back to school to finish my education as a lawyer was quite challenging. But that was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. I think young women need to understand the power of education,” she advised

The minister, whose father was a governor in Nigeria, recounted that she moved into advocacy from pageantry, having founded a nongovernmental organisation called Hope House Trust.