Lourine Adyero, one of the contestants who participated in this year’s Miss Uganda Beauty Pageant has come out to decry the massive levels of inequality and corruption in the fraternity. Taking to her social media handles, she narrated all that unfairness she and other contestants have faced.
According to her, she participated in last year’s edition but was disqualified on the basis of poor time keeping. She took this in good spirit and went back to work on herself. Fast forward to this year’s edition, she was called by the organizers to help them in getting contestants from the northern regional pageant.
She did not hesitate and looked for the girls. That pageant was held in Lira and she came with the girls she had brought. While there, she was asked to line up with other girls despite having helped them in the search and being a previous contestant.
Since this is something she had always wanted, she obliged and finally went through. Eventually she came to Kampala for the finals and it was here that she experienced unfairness. Lourine says that she’s always practiced by the lines of the pageant’s necessities.
Therefore, Lourine Adyero was well aware of what to do and how to answer and she excelled in that category. Being one of the top 5 social work students at UCU Mukono, she says that she knew what to do and how to answer since she sees the pageant as a social work thing.
Even the judges and fellow contestants were left in awe of how brilliant she was and how she answered back. The organizers started complimenting her intelligence. However, hell broke loose when they went into the parents meetings.
Most of the contestants’ parents were looked down on because they didn’t have money and influence. For those whose parents had both, they were getting favored and these other contestants started to notice the unfair pattern.
Later, they went to the boot camp that lasted about three days. Here they were starved and were never given lunches despite the organizers revealing that Uganda Airlines was sponsoring the event and had made a contribution of 100,000 dollars.
The contestants themselves had been required to pay 1.7m shillings while coming in. They therefore all wondered why they weren’t being fed. Lourine says that this was too hard for her and she called her mother crying.
Meanwhile, eliminations were ongoing during this time. It was here that the contestants were told how they will be eliminated if they don’t buy votes. This shocked Lourine who thought the pageant was all about beauty with brains.
She had presented a couple of interesting topics such as HIV/AIDS, tackling poverty among others. She therefore didn’t understand why she had to buy votes since it wasn’t a popularity contest.
Apparently Miss Uganda North couldn’t believe this. She had sacrificed a lot to be there. A dead semester, UCU supports her despite their policy that doesn’t favor such things. They even sent someone to talk to her to convince her to call her area MPs and Ministers, her mother and mobilizations to buy her votes.
After much deliberation, Lourine Adyero just decided to quit the entire pageant because according to her, the organizers already had someone they wanted to win that was getting favored by the entire team. She now wants the government to take keen interest and investigate the organizers.
Meanwhile, Natasha Nyonyozi from Kigezi region was crowned Miss Uganda 2024 last night.
