By Rose Ofem
The controversies trailing the conduct of the 2018 edition of the Cross River State Northern Festival (NorthFest) pageant, ex-beauty queen and contestant in that pageant, Jesustina Ogar has said that the event was a charade shrouded in confusion which has cast a shadow on the industry in the State.
Miss Ogar stated this on Sunday where she condemned the mode deployed by the organisers to select the winners of the pageant which according to her, contravened every known standard for doing such.
“According to what the organisers told us the judgment begins from the introduction, so we came out according to our numbers, did our introduction before they started their judgment. After the third outing, which was the talent presentation then we got back stage for eviction as the top ten contestants would be called for question and answer.
“As the judges started calling the top ten contestants, four males and six females making a total number of ten, the audience were surprised and so shocked even the contestants we were surprised,” Miss Ogar said while speaking as guest on a radio program; ‘The Dialogue With Agba Jalingo’ monitored by CrossRiverWatch.
Ogar who said she has won two beauty pageants, posited that the event was not free and fair.
“There should be a level of satisfaction from the audience that actually this person was meant to win, but in this case there was no one satisfaction from the audience,” she said and maintained that the chaos that followed the announcement of the top ten contestants was not because of her. “I don’t live in Abakpa neither do I live in Igoli that I will say it is my home town and I have people there no!” she said.
Ogar who also condemned the way winners emerged via voting by the contestants, further averred that: “When they called the ten final contestants, everybody was shocked the audience was shocked because they announced that the judgment was going to be based on their choice of candidates and the Judges.
“How they got the top ten contestants, everybody was shocked; even the contestants too were surprised and they had to go backstage and the next thing we started hearing rambling from the audience
“The judges did not care about what the audience was saying and the audience were like ‘we thought we had a say’ you said the audience will choose and what was happening? The judges went ahead asking the ten (final) contestants questions when the audience had no answer, then people got into shouting that no the contest was inconclusive as at that time.”
Miss Ogar had on Saturday, taken to Facebook and vented her frustration at the exercise. She wrote: “That faithful evening what happened that day shows that pageantry indeed has lost it salt.”
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