Pamela Peter-Vigboro Leesi, representing Cross Rover State, was crowned Miss Nigeria 2015 in the early hours of Sunday at Oriental Hotel, Victoria, Lagos.
Very little is known about the winner.
In fact very little is known about this year’s competition – the 39th in the series.
Grace Oyelude, the 84-year-old winner of the inaugural the contest in 1957, was a more trending topic in the hours leading to the final.
Musician, Yemi Alade, was the star performer on the night
Ruth Osime, Lanre Da Silva, Audu Maikori, Adebola Williams and Mai Atafo joined others to decide who got the tiara.
Even Twitter, the platform for everything serious and banal, largely ignored the contest.
Daily Times, owners of the Nigeria’s oldest beauty competition, was as uninformed as million of Nigerians.
The media organisation has only copied and pasted tweets from the competition on its website as at the time of writing this.
Precious little has happened since the now 24-year-old Ezinne Akudo won in 2013.
The last entry posted in the news category on the pageant’s website was on October 12, 2014.
A last minute attempt at generating media buzz few days before the competition ended in a whimper.
AIT did broadcast the event live but it was too little too late.
Organisers now have the task of playing post-event catch-up.
Miss Nigeria has evolved over the years but what is left is a shell of the glitz and glamour perhaps last witnessed with the crowning of Bibiana Ohio in 1991.
The scrapping of the swimsuit segment, stiff competition from the Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria (MBGN) which produced Miss World Agbani Darego in 2001, age and certificate scandal, and change of franchisees – from Nike Oshinowo in 2010 to Elizabeth Aisien in 2012 – have all conspired to rob the pageant of its shine.
Miss Nigeria winners no longer represent the country at international pageants after Nwando Okwuosa at Miss International 2003, focusing now on charities and soirees at home.
Pamela may therefore not achieve the fame of Oyelude, Rosemary Anieze (1960), Yemi Idowu (1962), Helen Prest (1979), Binta Sukai (1990), Vien Tetsola (2000) and Sylvia Edem (2002) but she has been promised N5million, an SUV, six-month skill acquisition programme in any institution, one-year paid apartment and all expense paid trip to three different countries for her trouble.
That, and an escape from Twitter troll, should make the 22-year-old happy. For now.
Maybe there is some truth in the tweet below.
Because you twitter people are very bad, the organisers of the Miss Nigeria pageant decided to keep it low key and away for you guys
— Zizi (@Black_Velvette) November 8, 2015
