Carnival Calabar Queen Pageant Night 2009

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Picture glitz, glamour, a masked ball opening, live performances from Kell and Banky W, romantic serenades from music heartthrob Dare Art Alade and 29 delectable and beautiful ladies.- Welcome to the Carnival Calabar queen pageant 2009/10!.

In its third year, the CCQ 2009 /10 has at the heart of its existence, the MACA (Mother’s Against Child Abandonment) project, an initiative of the wife of the Governor of Cross River State, Mrs Obioma Liyel Imoke whose main concerns are reducing the spate of abandoned babies in Cross River State. Ticket and table sales derived from the pageant are used to fund the MACA project.

This year’s CCQ (Carnival Calabar Queen) pageant strove to keep with the pageant‘s original slogan, - that of being ‘more than just a beauty pageant” but rather a search for a young lady who embodies the eloquence, integrity, intelligence and poise required to be an ideal role model to the youths of the state and also an ambassador for tourism for the state. Organizers also seized the opportunity showcase the state’s many tourist attractions. For this reason, all 29 contestants were named after famous tourist sites and monuments in Cross River State.

According to Imoke the initiator of the pageant ‘ let us look beyond the beauty, glitz and glamour- beyond the stereotyped pretty face- to a winner who will do her part in championing the plight of abandoned babies, and perform her role as a model for our youths”

Transparency was also emphasized in the process of choosing the next queen. The choice of judges for this year’s CCQ further confirmed the desire of the organizers to stage a contest that was as free and fair as possible.

All renowned professionals in their own right Joke Silva, Adesuwa Onyenokwe, Charles Aniagolu, Elisha Attai , and Chidi Momah formed part of the impressive line up of judges invited to oversee the scoring process. These judges would not easily be swayed in their decisions as they took time to cast their votes for the new CC queen.

To allow for a transparent process, the elimination process was broken down into three different categories, the 29 contestants were trimmed down to the top 10 semi finalists and this was further trimmed down to the top 5 finalists before the eventually winner was announced.

Though a long process, it was certainly proved worthwhile at the end, as the top 10 semi finalists had to impress the judges with a display of their talent to determine who would go through to the top 5 finals. After the contestants had showcased their talent for the judges, the dynamics of the competition changed as those who could not fully express their talent were dropped by the discerning judges and the top five that emerged were quite mix of contestants who had proven that they possessed more than beauty , but substance as well.

The next task at hand for the top five was to answer a question from the judges.

In this stage of the competition, the judges were at liberty to ask the contestants any question at random.

As questions were asked the contestants proved their mettle by answering the questions as accurately as they could manage.

The high point of this process was when Adesuwa Onyenokwe directed this question to Miss Alok Monolith- “because you have been named after a monolith, could you name other places in the world where monoliths can be found?” A difficult question no doubt, but when 23 yr old Miss Mayen Ekpo smiled and provide the correct answer, ‘Stonehenge- Wilshire England precisely” the crowd cheered ecstatically because they knew at last that they had found a winner.

It may just so be, that fate played a small hand in the coronation of Miss Mayen Ekpo as the new CCQ queen, orphaned at a tender age, Mayen was brought up by relatives, an even more exciting twist in the scheme of things is that she happens to be the granddaughter of late prominent women’s activist Mrs Margaret Ekpo, and if genealogy is anything to go by the CCQ may have found a worthy champion to promote their cause indeed.

The new queen has quite a hectic year scheduled ahead of her, she is expected to go on advocacy tours to the youths in the state, she will also fly the flag for tourism in Cross River state and is expected to pick up from where her predecessors left off to take the MACA vision to even greater heights beyond the state.

She is also now the proud winner of six million naira worth of prizes- breakdown of which include a brand new car worth up to 4 million donated by Mega Hilton , 2 million naira in cash , provided by major sponsors of the event Oceanic bank, alongside a trip to the United Kingdom sponsored by British Airways, clothes for a year by Davida shirt makers and a year’s supply of free cosmetics from TARA make up and lots more...

Miss Mayen herself cannot believe her own luck, she says “it’s been incredible night, I had all but given up hope when my name was mentioned, when I noticed my uncle in the crowd, l broke down in tears, it’s really nice to have my family share this moment with me and I promise to make them proud of me in my reign”.

Whilst wishing the new queen the very best in her reign as the CCQ, we most certainly look forward to her year as she performs her functions as the new CCQ.

For more details, please log on to www.carnivalcalabarqueen.com