Miss World Pageant Quits Nigeria After Fatal Riots
Updated 8:41 PM ET November 22, 2002
By Tume Ahemba
KADUNA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Promoters of the Miss World pageant bowed to
Nigerian Muslim anger Friday, moving this year's event in Abuja to
London after protest riots killed more than 100 people in the West
African country.
The organizers issued a statement around midnight, after a third day of
rioting in the northern city of Kaduna and an unexplained stampede at
the main mosque of Abuja, the nearby national capital where hopeful
beauty queens have gathered.
"Miss World Organization and Silver Bird Productions Ltd., organizers of
the 2002 Miss World pageant, have decided to move the grand finale to
London, England," the statement said.
"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."
A spokeswoman said the London pageant would be held on December 7, the
date originally scheduled in Nigeria.
The statement made no specific reference to the riots, ignited by an
article in a Nigerian newspaper suggesting the Prophet Mohammad would
probably have married one of the Miss World beauty queens if he were
alive today.
Clashes raged Friday in Kaduna in the mainly Muslim north of the
country. Scorched bodies lay in streets, dotted by burned houses and
overturned cars. Shops were looted.
The Nigerian Red Cross put the death toll by Friday morning at 105.
Witnesses later spoke of more killings by civilians and security forces
trying to stop Muslim-Christian clashes.
The Red Cross said 3,000 people had been displaced and hundreds injured.
Two years ago thousands were killed in violence stemming from non-Muslim
opposition to plans to introduce Islamic sharia law in Kaduna, one of 36
federal states.
The latest violence erupted Wednesday when rampaging Muslims burned the
offices of the independent Lagos-based newspaper This Day in Kaduna. The
newspaper had published the article and later apologized.
Eyewitnesses said fighting spread from mainly Muslim districts to
Christian-dominated areas Friday, despite a 24-hour curfew.
CONTROVERSY OVER PAGEANT
Nigeria won the rights to host this year's pageant after Nigerian Agbani
Darego was crowned Miss World 2001 in South Africa, the first black
African to win the title. But Nigeria's plans to stage its biggest
show-business event ever have been hit by controversy, mainly over the
case of Amina Lawal, who was sentenced to death by stoning under Islamic
law for bearing a child out of wedlock.
Several contestants threatened to boycott this year's Miss World over
the sentencing, but almost all turned up after government assurances
that there would be no stoning.
Muslim fundamentalist groups in Nigeria, terming the pageant "a parade
of nudity," also threatened to disrupt it. Organizers had to shift the
event from November to December to prevent it falling in the Muslim fast
of Ramadan.
But both Nigerian officials and the organizers had insisted until the
shock announcement that the show would go on.
The 92 Miss World contestants were confined to their hotel in the
capital Abuja Friday.
But hours before the announcement of the cancellation, the spokeswoman
said some contestants and their families were becoming troubled by the
swirling controversy.
"Some of them (contestants) have had second thoughts, but we've been
able to change their minds," she told Reuters shortly after the Abuja
mosque stampede sent people running in all directions near the pageant
hotel.
BIG EMBARRASSMENT
Shifting the pageant from Nigeria is a disaster for local organizers and
a personal embarrassment to President Olusegun Obasanjo's wife Stella, a
co-sponsor through her Child Care Trust charity.
Some Nigerians also fear it will hurt their country's chances of hosting
other major international events. Nigeria says it will bid for the 2010
soccer World Cup finals.
Obasanjo himself was in Lagos Friday, the second day of a three-day
official visit to Nigeria's commercial capital.
At one event, he addressed concerns of foreign critics of Nigeria's
sharia code, denying reports that scores of Muslim children had been
sentenced to have their hands amputated for theft.
"I want to assure everybody -- Nigerians and foreigners alike -- that no
child in Nigeria has been sentenced to amputation and that no child will
be amputated," he said.
Cancellation of the pageant will be celebrated by Islamists in the north
as a major victory, and could help defuse the situation in Kaduna, where
tension remained high as night fell.
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