Ireland’s Miss Nigeria is headed to Nollywood
The current Miss Nigeria Ireland is to be groomed as a star in Nigerian feature films, Metro Éireann has learned.
Top Nollywood director and producer Kingsley Ogoro made the announcement at the Hope & Smile Charity Night 2012, an initiative of pageant organiser the Perod Foundation held recently in Tallaght.
Peter Oghina, chief executive of the Perod Foundation, told Metro Éireann that plans are being made for current Miss Ireland Nigeria Ewoma Ogoro – daughter of Kingsley Ogoro – to travel to Nigeria to begin her acting training before she returns to college in the autumn.
Future winners of the pageant will also get the same opportunity, he added, urging young Nigerian woman aspiring for a Nollywood career to enter the beauty competition which takes place next month.
The charity night in Tallaght, which raised €1,000 for Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin, was boosted by the presence of leading Nollywood stars Osita Iheme and Funke Akindele and comedians Okey Bakassi and Youngest Oldman, as well as Nigerian Senator Stella Omu, the Nigerian Embassy’s deputy head of mission Georges Alabi, and Dublin-based funnyman Fabu D.
Speaking at the event, Ewoma Ogoro said the charity initiative was launched by her predecessor Elizabeth Bola-joko to raise “awareness and support for cancer illness”.
Ogoro added: “It is most important to know that [cancer] can affect anybody… but unfortunately Africans seem not to be bothered, probably [because] of this culture of secrecy or ignorance or an ‘it can’t happen to me’ attitude.”
The civil engineering student at DIT, whose reign as Miss Nigeria Ireland will end on 22 September, said the failure of Africans to recognise the deadly nature of cancer means that sufferers are neither identified on time nor receive proper care and treatment.
“Cancer does not make you a lesser human,” she said. “Cancer is not a shameful illness. It is bad enough that one is sick; it is even worse when you know that no one understands you because you are dying in silence.”
Ogoro urged men and women alike to talk to their GP about cancer screening.
“If for any reason one has cancer, it is not end of the world,” she said. “[People] should not condemn themselves to die miserably without putting up a fight.”
