By Jonathan Ugbal
Miss. Perpetua Adie, a 200 level undergraduate in the Department of Mass Communication, Mauriv Institute of Management and Technology, Akwa Ibom State who recently emerged as Miss Northern Cross River 2014/2015 has stressed the need for sex education especially for the girl child and genuine youth empowerment as a means of making our society a better place.
Perpetua Adie, who hails from Bedia village in Obudu Local Government Area, in this chat with CrossRiverWatch reveals that from childhood she had always enjoyed pageantry, which led her to sign up for membership with House of Lavender, a modeling agency based in Calabar.
As part of her plans as Miss Northern Cross River she maintained that “I believe education is the best legacy anyone can leave and it comes in different forms. I will make educating the girl child a priority, empowerment of the youths is also on the agenda. We have a lot of unemployed youths, educated and non-educated, we will create programs that will empower them in various ways, some can learn crafting such as knitting and weaving, pottery, farming and many more. The organizers of the pageant, Coalition of Cross River North Peace and Unity Initiative have programs that I can key into and make more successful.”
On her opinion regarding sex education especially for the girl child, the beauty queen said “People see sex education as a bad thing, they believe it exposes youths especially girls to harmful things, so they don’t educate them on sex which is very bad as this has led to unwanted pregnancies, terminated dreams as well as even death from abortions. I believe every girl ought to be educated about sex. It should be an integral part of us so as to build not girls but prospective mothers that are morally upright. It will help solve some of the problems been faced by many today.”
When asked how she intends to carry out all these given the size of the geographical entity she represents and seeming paucity of funds for most state and non state actors, Perpetua was still optimistic, “I will key into the projects and programs of the organizers, secondly, I intend to invite the beauty queens in the Local Government Areas that make up Northern Cross River so that we will have a Northern Cross River Queens Forum, NCRQF to brainstorm on how to move the senatorial district forward, that way things will be much easier.” She said.
She advised Northern Cross Riverians to continue seeking education: “I keep on stressing this because education is the best legacy, in everything you do, let there be some literacy in it, that way you do it uniquely.”