Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, has shared her amazing life story, underlining the obstacles she overcame to become the successful lady she is now.
Bianca, wife of the late Ikemba Nnewi, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu—spoke at the Nigerian Women’s Day event on the margins of the 69th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Despite coming from a rich home, Bianca stated that she did not let it impede her dreams.
She emphasised the importance of education in every woman’s life and described the temptations she experienced when she began earning money as a beauty queen.
She revealed that she considered dropping her law studies at the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus.
“I started off really as a young girl wanting to see the world. I remember sitting in the common room with other young girls always in those days; we would be watching Top of the Box, the music videos, Miss World, Miss Universe, and always quite impressed with the exotic backdrops more than anything. I just wanted to travel and see the world, and what was the best way of doing that if not going into a pageant?
“So, I started my journey of going first into a certain pageant, which I won, but as a student I couldn’t take the offer that came, which included a one-year modelling contract in Tokyo. Of course, my parents didn’t know. They didn’t send me to school to go and take part in a pageant, so I had to give that up.
“Until when I now took part in the Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria, which rendered me homeless for one month because, naturally, African fathers – my father was livid with rage. But I guess after I had won other pageantries like Miss Africa, Miss Intercontinental and so forth, he had to come to terms with it.”
Bianca recounted how challenging it was to balance education with financial independence at a young age.
“But the point I’m making is this: one of the hardest things is, when you start earning money quite early, the biggest temptation would be to leave school. By the time I was earning my own money, I was a law student living in the hostel with about six other students with no water, nothing, and then going back to school to finish my education as a lawyer was quite challenging. But that was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. I think young women need to understand the power of education,” Bianca advised.
