She is the first ever winner of Super Sireyna Worldwide 2014 in Manila, Philippines. She became the first black transgender woman to be crowned in an international transgender pageant.[5][6] With her 2011 participation in Miss International Queen, a beauty pageant in Pattaya for transgender women, Miss Sahhara became the first trans woman from Nigeria to come out in the international press.[7][8] She subsequently founded a global transgender awareness news curation organisation called TransValid, and an advocacy pageant for transgender women called Miss Trans Global .[9][10]
Biography
Miss Sahhara grew up in a small village in northern Nigeria. Her grandmother, who raised her while her mother was away at university, supported her in expressing her gender identity, but her neighbors and other family members were less supportive. As a teenager who wanted to wear makeup, dresses, and high heels, she was bullied at home and in public for her gender expression, suffering physical and sexual assault, harassment, and death threats. Her uncles beat her, and her church told her she was possessed by evil spirits.[9][11][12][13]
After two suicide attempts as a teenager, and being imprisoned for her gender presentation in January of 2004, Miss Sahhara resolved to either leave Nigeria or succeed in completing suicide. Later in 2004, she emigrated to London, where she was able to meet other transgender women, access gender-affirming care, and live openly as a woman.[11][13][14][15][16]
Miss Sahhara has participated in a number of pageants in the UK and abroad, representing her birth country of Nigeria to draw attention to the plight of the African LGBT community.[18][19] She is also the founder and executive producer of transgender advocacy pageants Queen of Nations and Miss Trans Global.[20]
Miss Sahhara has been a vocal critic of the 2014 Nigerian Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, which imposes prison terms of up to 14 years on LGBT Nigerians.[37][38]
In 2014, Miss Sahhara founded TransValid, a global awareness organization for the transgender community.[39] Her activities with TransValid have included a 2015 short film, The Deadly Price of Transphobia in Brazil,[40] and a 2016 campaign titled 'I am Trans and I have the Right to Life' .[41][42][43]
^Miss Sahhara does not use her legal name online for safety reasons; some sources claim that it is "Iris Henson" or "Clifford Oche", but she has denied both.[1]
