Neurite Mendes from Angola, this past Saturday night emerged winner of the Miss Africa 2016 beauty pageant held at the Calabar International Concention Centre, CICC, becoming in the process the first Miss Africa Climate Change ambassador.
With this victory, Miss Angola is going home with $25, 000 (twenty five thousand dollars) and a brand new 2016 Ford Escape, while first and second runners-up, Miss South Africa and Miss Cameroon, also go home with cash in the region of $15, 000 and $10, 000 respectively.
Meanwhile, some indigenes and residents in the state have not favourably reacted to the decision of the Cross River State Government to host and bankroll the event. Chris Inyang wrote on Facebook that the pageant was “another fantastic exhibition of extreme clueless disposition”, just like Paul Enyong who wrote, “total waste, what is our gain?”.
However, Mathias Amgbah, in what is a direct response to the trending comments against the event, submitted that the Miss Africa 2016, “…was a wonderful event, 240 million people watched in around the world (stats from DSTV OB van). And it was the No. 2 trending topic on twitter in Nigeria…the reviews are excellent”. Amgbah’s submission and statistics were immediately checked out by www.calitown.com. On the DSTV website and related searches on several Miss Africa 2016 related websites and platforms as well as on search engine, google, no viewer statistics for the event were thrown up, we can reveal.
Again, government sources have denied claims in some quarters that the state government forced her appointees to buy event tickets at N10, 000 per head in other to recoup expenses put into the event. “We even had a lot of tickets that we gave out as complimentary tickets, if we were so desperate, will we give out those tickets? It is unfortunate that everything this administration does is read upside down, only God knows the wonderful intentions Ben Ayade has for this state”, a source who elects to remain anonymous said.
The street chorus still remains that many Cross Riverians see no logic in the decision to host this event when several civil servants are yet to receive a backlog of salaries owed them. “Forget about the money that was used in organizing the event, pls look at the $50, 000 (fifty thousand dollars) dollars prize money alone, don’t you think it would have been put to better use in the state instead of having a few skinny girls come here and get paid for walking around in pants and bras?, I pity this state”, one Etim Okon wrote.
