LAGOS - Nigeria‘s reigning Miss World Agbani Darego has refused to become involved in a threatened boycott of this years‘ beauty pageant in Abuja after some contestants vowed to withdraw over death sentences handed down by Nigerian Muslim courts. Asked about the threatened boycott of the event on November 30 in the Nigerian capital, she said: „I‘m sorry, I won‘t answer that.“

Beauty queens from European countries, chiefly Norway, France and Belgium, said they would not attend the pageant because of death sentences for adultery passed by Nigeria‘s Muslim courts.

The executions — by stoning to death — of a woman and a couple in north-central Nigeria were ordered in accordance to the strict Islamic sharia legal code in practice in a dozen states in the country‘s predominantly Muslim north.

Darego, however, said the view of an influential Nigerian Muslim group that the country should not host the annual pageant was not „proper and right“. „I see the pageant as an avenue for all ladies to get into whatever they want to be, maybe modelling or any profession,“ Darego told Reuters. „Previous beauty queens have gone on to become doctors, lawyers…important people in the society. Is that a promotion of promiscuity then?“

Reuters