Nigerians in South Africa have said the controversial parental history of Chidimma Adetshina who withdrew from a beauty contest should be thoroughly investigated. Adetshina, 23, pulled out from Miss South Africa Beauty Pageant 2024 on Thursday following criticisms from South Africans that she was not eligible to participate in the pageantry. Her withdrawal stemmed from the information published on the organisation’s website that she was born in South Africa to a Nigerian father and a Mozambique mother.
The organisers also affirmed that she was a naturalised South African. However, the Department of Home Affairs for South Africa, in a statement on Wednesday, claimed that Adetshina’s mother might have engaged in a fraud. “The Department of Home Affairs can indicate that prima facie reasons exist to believe that fraud and identity theft may have been committed by the person recorded in Home Affairs records as Chidimma Adetshina’s mother,” the statement read.
This forced Adetshina to withdraw from the contest billed for Saturday at the SunBet Arena in Pretoria. She wrote on Instagram, “I have made the difficult decision to withdraw myself from the competition for the safety and wellbeing of my family and I.” The President of the Nigerian Union in South Africa, Mrs Doris Ikeri-Solarin, told Saturday Punch that it was an “unfortunate” incident borne out of “discrimination.
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