The Future Awards releases Nominees List for 2010!

- Mercy Johnson, MI, Psquare, Omawumi, Tosyn Bucknor, Tolu Ogunlesi, Dare Art-Alade, Asa, others make list
- 8 young scientists discovered
On Tuesday, the 8th of December, The Future Awards released its much-awaited list of nominees for the 2010 edition of the awards. “It’s a rich list!” said Emilia Asim-Ita, the awards’ PR Director. “I am so proud of it; it took two months of gruelling work and research, but I look at the list of another 160 high-achieving young Nigerians and I think to myself: wow, we have been representing!”
The long list was released after two months of calling for nominations, and having town hall meetings across eight states of the federation (Osun, Adamawa, Edo, Rivers, Cross River, Enugu, Abuja and Kaduna), in conjunction with HiTV, as well as Accra, Johannesburg, Manchester and London, reaching out to young Nigerians in order to get a fine spread of nominations and participation.
All the nominees are Nigerian citizens aged 18 – 31.
In the Musician of the Year category, nominees are Wande Coal, MI, Kel, Darey, Rooftop MCs, Banky W and Psquare. Actor of the Year has Mercy Johnson, Omoni Oboli, Ali Nuhu, Nonso Diobi, Kemi Lala Akindoju, Mercy Aigbe, Tonto Dikeh and Mnet Tinsel’s Gideon Okeke.
The Journalist of the Year category has Toyosi Ogunseye (The Punch), Ruona Agbroko (NEXT) Rachel Ogbu (Newswatch), Funke Adetutu (BusinessDay) Chinedu Iroche (NEXT) Afolabi Adekoya (Citypeople), Segun Adeoye (TELL) and Amina Alhassan (Daily Trust).
“The Best Use of Science category was particularly challenging, and we were afraid more than once that we would not get nominees and would have to cancel it,” Ms. Asim-Ita said. “But at the end of the day, we were pleasantly surprised.” The eight nominees in that category are nominated for inventions and research in malaria, electricity inverters, magnetic safety bumpers, waste management solutions, and robotics.
Another challenging category was that for Excellence in Public Service. According to the Central Working Committee report, which full version can be found on the website www.thefuturenigeria.com, “Where there was some challenge with the Excellence in Public Service, not surprisingly, with questionable achievements, unanswered questions and integrity constraints, doubling down on research and investigation led to expand its scope rightly to include all those in institutional decision making. Therefore, we were able to find impressive young people in a wide range of areas from the UNFPA to the Federal Medical Centre, Makurdi.”

Other categories include Best Use of Advocacy, Best Use of Technology, On Air Personality (TV), On Air Personality of the Year (Radio), Screen Producer of the Year, Music Producer of the Year, Business Owner of the Year, Creative Artist of the Year, Sportsperson of the Year, Model of the Year, Magazine of the Year, Style Entrepreneur of the year and Team of the Year. All of the names can be found on www.thefuturenigeria.com, as well as details of the voting and judging process.
The nominees for Young Person of the Year, which is the highest of all the categories, are Tolu Ogunlesi, who won the CNN African Journalist of the Year award this year, musician Asa, music producer Cobhams Asuquo, malaria researcher Ify Aniebo, youth advocate Toyosi Akerele, movie producer Stephanie Okereke, dance professional Qudus Onikeku and Big Brother 5 host, IK Osakioduwa.
The two-month judging process begins immediately. Members of the Audit Committee judging the awards include Reuben Abati, Segun Odegbami, Hafsat Abiola, Muhtar Bakare, Peace Fiberesima, Siene Alwell-Brown, amongst others. The awards proper hold on 7 February 2010. The confirmed Keynote Address speaker is Managing Director of the World Bank, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.