Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, has opened up on how she was rejected at home for participating in a beauty pageant.
The ex-beauty queen spoke at the Nigerian Women’s Day on the sidelines at the 69th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Bianca won the Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria competition in 1988 at the age of 20. She also won the Miss Africa 1989 pageant held in Gambia before representing Nigeria at both Miss World in Hong Kong and Miss Universe in Mexico.
Bianca’s father, Christian Chukwuma Onoh, popularly known as CC Onon, was a businessman and lawyer who became the governor of old Anambra State in 1983 at the end of the Second Nigerian Republic.
Bianca said that as a young lady, she did not allow her privileged background to distract her.
She highlighted the importance of education in every woman’s life, adding that when she started making money as a beauty queen, there was the temptation to abandon her law programme at the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus.
“I started off really as a young girl wanting to see the world,” she said.
“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.”
