NIGERIA: Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has cancelled plans to receive contestants for this year's Miss World pageant in Abuja in an effort to avoid offending Muslims, organisers said yesterday.
The event has already been overshadowed by fears of a mass boycott over stoning death sentences passed by Islamic courts on Nigerian women convicted of adultery. Muslim groups in Nigeria have called the pageant "a parade of nudity" and threatened to disrupt the contest.
"The girls were initially due to worship with the president in the presidential chapel yesterday, but this was put off to today," a pageant official who asked not to be named said.
"Today's meeting has also been cancelled. We understand the president's chief of staff, who is a Muslim, categorically ruled out any chance of the girls coming to the state house," the official added.
"He said that as a Muslim he was opposed to the whole idea of the pageant," said the official, recounting a meeting between pageant organisers and presidential officials. A presidency spokesman could not comment on the account of the pageant organisers.
More than 80 contestants who have been in Abuja since Monday were flown yesterday to the southeastern city of Calabar for a programme of pre-pageant video shoots. The main contest will be held in Abuja on December 7th.
All engagements ahead of the main event have been set in the predominantly Christian southeast and the oil-producing Niger Delta. Abuja, the inland capital, is close to Nigeria's Muslim heartland in the north. The main event was shifted from November to December after Muslims complained it would fall during their holy Ramadan fast.
The cabinet minister responsible for the region of Abuja took the trouble of assuring Muslim groups that the contestants would not wear revealing clothes while in Abuja.
The girls remained in their Abuja hotel until they flew to southeastern Calabar yesterday. Mr Obasanjo's presidency has been dogged by clashes between Muslims and Christians. - (Reuters)