Women fall at 33rd Dame Awards as Punch, editor soar

Only one female nominee featured at the 33rd Annual Diamond Awards for Media Excellence(DAME).

This happened as the Punch won the Newspaper of the Year Award and its Editor, Mr Dayo Oketola, emerged the Editor of the Year at  the awards ceremony which took place on Saturday night in Ikeja.

The only female nominee, Miss Nkechi Nnanna of the Arise Television Station emerged the winner in the category she featured – Television Reporting.

She beat two male nominees from the same television station – Adetokunbo Oyetunji (first runner-up) and Ovieteme George (second runner-up) – to win.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Nnanna, a business reporter, won the award with her story: “ Inside Nigeria’s 2023 Economic Turmoil”.

It is an overview of the instability and pains that characterised the Nigerian economy in 2023, from the policy inconsistency in Naira redesign to the foreign exchange reforms through rates’ unification, the deregulation of petrol pricing and the attendant inflation.

The Trustee of the DAME, Mr Lanre Idowu, blamed the nomination of only one woman in the 17 categories featured in the 2024 edition of DAME, on poor quality of entries.

He said that a good number of women and men submitted entries for the awards but many could not sail through due to lack of quality.

Idowu, also the Chief Executive Officer of Diamond Publications Ltd. and Editor-in-Chief of Media Review, said that DAME was in pursuit of excellence and would maintain high quality.

He said that DAME had to drop 10 categories of the awards because there were no quality entries on them.

“We featured only 17 categories, we dropped 10 because of poor quality of the entries.

“The problem is about framing.

“A number of them could not frame their work well. If you don’t frame your story well, it will be difficult for you to do a good work,” he said.

He urged those willing to participate in subsequent editions of the awards to work harder.

“If we have more sponsorship, we can do training.

“With the continued support of our sponsors and that of the good people of Nigeria, the journey ahead will be smoother,” Idowu said.

He said that the awards were tokens of appreciation for good work and a source of encouragement for greater productivity.

“Indeed, the central message of the stories that have been nominated for awards today is one of hope, of the need for a better society, and of a belief that Nigeria can and will be better.”

NAN reports that Punch was the first runner-up in the Editorial Writing Category of the awards. The Nation won in that category.

The Publisher of Business Day newspaper, Mr Frank Aigbogun, got the Lifetime Achievement Award while Mr Kunle Ajibade, a former Executive Editor at TheNEWS, secured the Distinguished Honorary Fellowship Award.