The only female entry in the 2024 Annual Diamond Awards for Media Excellence emerged winner in her category as men dominated the 33rd edition.
The PUNCH emerged the Newspaper of the Year as its Editor, Dayo Oketola, won the Editor of the Year at the ceremony on Saturday.
The only female nominee, Nkechi Nnanna of the Arise Television Station, emerged the winner in the category she featured: Television Reporting.
She defeated two male nominees from the same television station: Adetokunbo Oyetunji (first runner-up) and Ovieteme George (second runner-up) to emerge as the winner at the awards ceremony in Ikeja area of Lagos State.
The News Agency of Nigeria 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, 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 Limited 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.
He said: “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.”
Idowu urged those willing to participate in subsequent editions of the awards to work harder.
He said: “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.”
He said that the awards were tokens of appreciation for good work and a source of encouragement for greater productivity.
He added: “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, Frank Aigbogun, got the Lifetime Achievement Award, while Kunle Ajibade, a former Executive Editor at TheNEWS, secured the Distinguished Honorary Fellowship Award.
