Beauty Queen lost her crown,certificates to strange fire

The second runner up of Miss fashion Nigeria 2014/2015,Chinaza Violet Chikeluba is in a great pain after a strange fire incident razed her family home destroying her crown,certificates and important belongings in the inferno few weeks ago.For Chikeluba, the fire incident was definitely not a welcome way to begin the year, and understandably left her wishing that she had not wit­nessed it. As it turned out, her aged mother was the only one at home when the fire started. Efforts to put out the fire failed and their two-bed­room family house in Agulu, Anam­bra State was razed to the ground.
Chikeluba had shared the house with her mother, after relocating home just to be close to her, follow­ing the completion of her studies at Delta State University, Abraka, (DELSU) where she read Education (Economics).

Recalling the painful incident, she said “I was attending a health programme at Awka. Early that morning I got a call from my cousin that our family house was on fire. Immediately, I took a bus to our village in Agulu in Anambra State. When I got there, I saw a lot of people trying to quench the fire. My mother was just crying and lamenting. I was staying with her, but I went for a two-week programme. That Wednesday was the third day of the programme. I left the house on the Sunday of that week. It was only my aged mother that was at home.

“Later on when I asked her what really happened, she said that early that morning when she woke up, she wanted to go for morning mass. She lit a candle as she was preparing for church. She does not even use can­dle; I don’t know why she lit a candle that morning. Sometimes, if I lit can­dle, she would be angry with me. I think it is a satanic plot or something. I don’t really know.”

Continuing the sad tale, Chikeluba said: “She wanted to get her chaplet and prayer book from under her pil­low. Just then, the candle fell from her hand and rolled under the under the mattress. Afrer picking it up, she did not know that the mattress had caught fire and was burning. But when she became aware of it, my mother began to call for help, but the gate to our house had not yet been opened. This delayed the neighbours that came around to help. In the con­fusion to open the gate, the raging fire did much damage. Some people even had to jump over the fence in order to help her quench the fire.

“All the efforts they made to quench the fire were in vain because everything got burnt. Everything – including all my certificates from pri­mary school to university, my crown as Miss Fashion Nigeria (Tourism), my creative wears that I use in mod­eling, everything was lost to the in­ferno.”

After graduating from DELSU in 2011 and completing the nation­al youth service, Chikeluba took up a teaching appointment in a private school, while honing her craft as a model.

“I was teaching in a private school and also modeling before I decided to come home to stay with my mother. I was then looking for another job in Awka so that I could be close to her. I am so devastated by the fire incident. I want help from the public. My mother is a poor widow. She has been suffering; I was even the one trying to make life meaningful for her. We don’t really have any hope right now. We don’t know who to run to. I am appealing to kind-hearted Nigerians to please come to our aid, whatever they can afford to give. So that we can start to rebuild the house because before you know it now, the rain will come back.

“My mother has been blaming herself for the whole thing. She has refused to go inside. She has been sleeping outside. The incident is real­ly frustrating to her. We are squatting with some neighbours, but my moth­er is still sleeping outside.”

Interestingly, Chikeluba’s mod­eling career began while she was in school and she was crowned as Miss Campus 2010. When she featured in the Miss Fashion Nigeria pageant, she represented Anambra State.

Until the fire incident happened, the distraught queen said she had planned to go on visitations during the Valentine season as part of her assignments as the reigning queen of the tourism component of the Miss Fashion Nigeria Pageant.

On this sad outcome, Chikeliuba said: “It has really affected me be­cause I am like an only child. My elder sister is married. The little mon­ey I was making I was using to care for my mother. Everything we had in the house was burnt. I was trying to see how I could take care of my mother. The thing has really drained my purse. I had plans to celebrate this valentine at the orphanage, though it is still on my mind.”(from The Sun)