Competition
Screening exercises (also known as 'auditions') are held nationwide to select contestants, and successful auditionees will be coached on etiquette and stage presence at boot-camp before competing at the finale where segments include Interview and Evening Gown, and unlike Miss Nigeria, Swimwear. In the pageant's early days, contestants were allowed to wear maillots of their choice during the swimsuit parade. Identical bikinis are now used instead. Unlike most beauty contests, contestants are not normally required to display any talent, although a number have been asked to sing, dance, or recite poetry during the interview stage.
In the mid-nineties, after MBGN did not place at Miss Universe and Miss World, MBGN organisers placed height and weight restrictions on the contestants' entry forms, and judges were told not to select the woman they found most attractive, but the one with a greater chance of winning at international pageants.
Due to the country's conservative standards, very few contestants competed in the early days of MBGN, and competitors from Northern Nigeria are rare, as its predominantly Muslim population frown on beauty pageants. Guy Murray-Bruce, who succeeded his brother as pageant director in 1992 told The Guardian: "... getting the girls to come and participate was hard, and we literally had to beg them to participate. But since (former Miss World) Agbani won it in 2001, we don’t beg anyone anymore".
Prizes for the winner vary each year, but have always included cash; as of 2012, it stands at N3000,000, and some winners have also received a car.
Read more about this topic: Most Beautiful Girl In Nigeria (Pageant)
Famous quotes containing the word competition:
“Like many businessmen of genius he learned that free competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient. And so he simply set about achieving that efficient monopoly.”
—Mario Puzo (b. 1920)
“Wearing overalls on weekdays, painting somebody else’s house to earn money? You’re working class. Wearing overalls at weekends, painting your own house to save money? You’re middle class.”
—Lawrence Sutton, British prizewinner in competition in Sunday Correspondent (London)
“Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major—perhaps the major—stake in the worldwide competition for power. It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control over access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor.”
—Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924)