Miss Nigeria pageant winner, Shatu Garko fires back at critics

The recently crowned Miss Nigeria, Shatu Garko, has replied her critics, especially conservative Muslim who think her participation and emergence as the 44^th winner in the pageant was immoral and a slap on Islam.

Shortly after she emerged as the winner of the Miss Nigeria pageant, Shatu and her family have been under severe attack with the Hisbah Police in Kano threatening to arrest her parents for allowing their daughter to participate in the pageant.

Even the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), had backed the reported move by the Kano Hisbah to invite the parents of the Hijab model over her ‘illegal’ participation in the just concluded Miss Nigeria beauty contest.

Also Read: Shatu Garko emerges first Hijab-wearing Miss Nigeria (Photos)

The Islamic human rights organization Director General, Prof. Ishaq Akintola, had, in an interview with The Punch Newspaper, stated that “no decent Muslim lady would participate in any beauty pageant like the Miss Nigeria beauty pageant.”

He also stated that the beauty pageant is not different from the television reality show, Big Brother Naija, insisting that Muslims do not participate in any beauty pageant, according to Quran Chapter 24, Verse 31; and Quran Chapter 33, Verse 59.

“These two verses emphatically insist that women should cover themselves and dress up decently and neither should display their body for the public.

“Being present in a beauty pageant even if she was in a hijab, she had done the cat walked with thousands of men eating her up with their eyes. It is not acceptable,” Akintola stressed.

However, the new beauty queen has fired back at her traducers. In an interview on Friday, the Kano State-born Shatu said that her critics can talk all they want, but the Miss Nigeria crown is already on her head.

“No one has called me, but I’ve gotten so many comments and DMs that ‘I was naked,’ ‘I’m doing the wrong thing.

“Some people who are not even Muslims said that I’m spoiling Miss Nigeria culture. Honestly, I don’t reply to them, I don’t say anything, I just move on. The crown is already on my head so there is nothing I can do,” she conclude.