By Imanuel Jannah & Augustus Bill

When most of the models that auditioned for the 2016 Miss Nigeria beauty pageant held at the Eko Convention Centre applied for selection, many of them joined the contest for the fame and alluring pleasure they would derive from the event. But for Chioma Stephanie Obiadi, the 40th Miss Nigeria, her goal was nothing else but to end the night with the crown of the most coveted pageant in the country.

The Anambra-born beauty queen and Nnamdi Azikiwe University undergraduate of Geography and Meteorology, in a narration of her stride into pageantry said her exploits may not come as a surprise to many who had followed her journey, but the timing would definitely knock surprise into her friends, as no one anticipated that the success they all saw coming was already close.

Newly crowned 40th Miss Nigeria, Chioma Obiadi from Anambra State.

“I took my first major stride into the hall of pageants when I contested and became the Face of Unizik in 2015. My victory in the campus pageant that year, as a fresher, was a glaring indicator that I was making a right turn into professional pageantry, as I maintained my focus and ended up as 1st runner up in the Miss Anambra pageant the same year.

“From then onwards, it was evidently clear that I was on the verge of writing my name on the scroll of fame, and I proved so by emerging winner of Miss Earth Nigeria 2016, on which premise I raised the flag of Nigeria high in Philippines in October.

“My exploits may not come as a surprise to many who had followed my journey, but the timing would definitely knock surprise into my friends, as no one anticipated that the success we all saw coming was already close and sudden.’ She said.

Meanwhile, the publisher of Shuga Campus Magazine of Unizik and CEO of Gwhites Entertainment, Kelvin Onyebuchi, who was among the first brands to offer Stephanie the support and media platform she needed to get to next level in pageantry said: “Tyra, as Stephanie was fondly called, was definitely going somewhere, but we never imagined her reaching so soon.

“I offered her the opportunity of being on the cover of my campus magazine in 2015. But, comparison of her photograph on the cover of that magazine in 2015 and her photograph as she strutted the stage on Monday night, clearly highlights the level of transformation she had gone through in the space of a year, from a naïve fresher to a confident beauty queen.”