I Was Left Homeless After Participating In 'Most Beautiful Girl In Nigeria' Pageant - Bianca Ojukwu

Bianca, the wife of the late Biafran leader Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu shared a shocking experience, revealing that participating in the 'Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria' pageant unexpectedly left her homeless.

Bianca Ojukwu, speaking at the Nigerian Women's Day, shared her personal story of staying focused despite her privileged upbringing. She said that as a young woman, she didn't let her wealthy background hold her back. Instead, she worked hard, pursued her education, and even became a beauty queen. However, she emphasized the importance of education, revealing that she resisted the temptation to drop out of law school despite earning money from pageants.

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“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.

 “We were taking care of juvenile delinquents. From there, I moved on to becoming Presidential Senior Special Assistant on Diaspora Matters, Nigeria’s Ambassador to Spain, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, World Tourism Organisation; and today, Honourable Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.”
“So, I think what we need to do is to start changing that mindset. We have to also appreciate the fact that when you have political parties in other societies, be it in the Conservative Party, in the Labour Party, in the Republican Party, or in the Democratic Party, you don’t have women leaders but in African political parties, you need to have Women Leaders. But you don’t have men leaders and what that says is that we have accepted that we are a segment that needs always to be carried along and I think that mindset needs to change.”