Danielle Adewusi, representing Lagos State, has been crowned Miss Universe Nigeria 2026 after beating 19 other contestants at the grand finale held on Sunday, September 27 at Balmoral Hall, Federal Palace Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos.
She will represent Nigeria at the 75th Miss Universe Festival scheduled for November 24, 2026 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Adewusi is a medical doctor who studied Medicine at King’s College London, where she earned an MBBS and a first-class BSc in Psychology. She is described as a physician and aspiring obstetrician and gynaecologist and has published research in international scientific journals.
Her victory continues a family legacy. Her mother, Tonia Okogbenin, won the Miss Universe Nigeria title in 1991, 35 years before her daughter’s win. Adewusi has said she grew up appreciating pageantry because of her mother but initially focused on her education.
She has competed before, finishing in the Top Five at Miss Universe Great Britain in 2023. She said she waited to compete for Miss Universe Nigeria until she had reached important milestones in her medical career and advocacy work.
She is the founder of Scrub The Stigma, a women’s health organisation focused on education and advocacy in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. The initiative runs programmes like Educate Lagos and Educate Edo, which provide menstrual health education.
Her advocacy project for the pageant, also called Scrub The Stigma, focuses on women’s health and she plans to take it to the global stage.
According to Silverbird, organisers of the pageant, she impressed judges with her confidence, intelligence, elegance and commitment to social impact, winning after the final question-and-answer session.
She explained her decision to enter pageantry by saying she realized she wasn’t describing several different careers in medicine, advocacy, modelling and public speaking, but one career that already existed: Miss Universe.
The final placements had Anita Osikhena of Edo as 1st runner-up, Myya Jones of Cross River as 2nd runner-up, Oluwafunmibi Ajaja of Ekiti as 3rd runner-up, and Melissa Toghanro of Delta as 4th runner-up. Toghanro will represent Nigeria at Miss Supranational.
