On Saturday night in Lagos, 23-year-old law student Chidimma Adetshina was crowned Miss Universe Nigeria after a protracted and very public debate about her eligibility. But the drama in question was actually tied to a separate beauty pageant nearly 3,000 miles away.
Adetshina had been competing to become Miss South Africa when she became the target of accusations that she wasn’t a South African citizen, a requirement for all contestants in the pageant. Normally, South African citizenship requires being born in South Africa to at least one parent who’s either a citizen or permanent resident. In interviews, Adetshina said she was born in Soweto—a Johannesburg township—to a Nigerian father and a South African mother with Mozambican roots, and grew up in Cape Town.
Adetshina was not the first contestant in the pageant to face such cyberbullying and abuse many commenters labeled xenophobic. But while pageant organizers initially came to her defence, sustained uproar on social media soon caught the attention of the country’s Department of Home Affairs. At one point, South Africa’s Minister for Sports, Art and Culture tweeted that, “We truly cannot have Nigerians compete in our Miss SA competition,” adding that Adetshina’s participation gave him “funny vibes.”
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“I am representing a country, but I don’t feel the love from the people I’m representing,” Adetshina said in an interview with Soweto Live amid the controversy.
A preliminary investigation found that Adetshina’s mother may have committed “identity theft,” though the agency absolved Adetshina herself of any wrongdoing, saying she was only an infant at the time.
Soon after, in early August, she withdrew from Miss South Africa, posting on Instagram a statement saying she’d made the decision for the “safety and wellbeing of my family and I.”
A day later she received an invite from the organizers of the Miss Universe Nigeria pageant, according to CNN. Her late entry into the contest wasn’t without its critics in Nigeria either, but Adetshina won out (if not won them over) in the end and will now compete at the Miss Universe pageant in Mexico City in November. Among those she’ll be seeking to beat: 28 year-old Mia le Roux, who did win the Miss South Africa title, becoming the first deaf woman to do so.
