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.[5][6] She subsequently founded a global transgender awareness news curation organisation called TransValid.[7][8]
In 2014, she became the first black transgender woman to win an international beauty pageant when she was crowned
Super Sireyna Worldwide 2014 on
Eat Bulaga!, Philippines longest noontime show.[9][10][11]
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.[7][12][13][14]
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.[12][14][15][16][17]
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.[19][20] She is also the founder and executive producer of
transgender advocacy pageants
Queen of Nations and
Miss Trans Global.[21]
Miss Sahhara has appeared on the covers of Time Out Magazine, transgender magazines Mask and TransLiving,[29][30] and modeled for Ziad Ghanem on the
London Fashion Week catwalk,[31][32][33][34][original research?] as well as performing at Madam Jojo's Kitsch Cabaret in
Soho before its 2014 closure.[35][36][37]
Charity and advocacy
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.[38][39]
In 2014, Miss Sahhara founded TransValid, a global awareness organization for the transgender community.[40] Her activities with TransValid have included a 2015 short film, The Deadly Price of
Transphobia in Brazil,[41] and a 2016 campaign titled 'I am Trans and I have the Right to Life' .[42][43][44]
^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]