When Victoria Chiamaka Udeh strutted confidently down the runway during a beauty pageant in Russia, brandishing her country’s red-stained flag, she thought only of one thing — the young people who lost their lives during the #EndSars protests in Nigeria last year.

The Nigerian student and model was intent on using the Miss Africa Russia platform to make a statement about the anti-police brutality demonstrations that rocked her country last October, and which culminated in security forces firing on unarmed protesters at the Lekki toll gate.

“I felt like ‘right now I don’t care about what the judges think about what I’m doing.’ What mattered to me was using the platform that Miss Africa Russia had given me to pass a message,” Udeh, 23, told CNN from Stavropol, southwest Russia, where she is studying medicine.