Nigerian Broadcasters Awards 2012: Great Voices and Faces To Trade Tackle in Honour of Late Ambassador Segun Olusola

The year 2010 would forever be remembered, as it was the year Nigerian Broadcasters Awards (NBA) made its debut, and only most cynical person in the world will rate the second edition held in 2011, a bad outing.

Unfortunately, as the preparations for the third edition gathers momentum, Ambassador Segun Olusola, the Grand Patron of the yearly NBA, passed on!

However, to honour the highly respected culture aficionado, broadcaster, patron of the arts and diplomats, who died on Thursday June 21, Kazeem Popoola led The Reality Entertainment, organisers of the first ever Nigerian Broadcasters Awards, are done with the plans to have a seminar and a football match.

The two-day events which will also double as a warm-up to this year’s edition of NBA scheduled for November 2012, will be holding at Yaba College of Technology (YabaTech), Yaba, Lagos, in August 16 and 18 respectively. These are in conjunction with Association of Mass Communication Students (AMACOS) YabaTech.


The seminar with the theme: BROADCASTING IN NIGERIA, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE, PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS’, will see veterans in the electronic and print media, as well as few selected popular on-air personalities, delivering papers on above subject. More so, on Saturday August 18, it’s going to be a battle of the titans as famous TV/ Radio presenters will lock horns with movie stars, in a football match tagged ‘BATTLE OF GREAT VOICES AND FACES.'

Speaking on August events, Kazeem Popoola, the CEO of The Reality Entertainment, said, “Although, the two-day events were actually initiated to get the on-air personalities in the mood for the yearly award ceremony, it’s so sad that we lost Ambassador Olusola, our grand patron, at this time.

“So, we’ve decided to dedicate the pre-events to the man who was a great influence to the broadcasters and movie practitioners. Moreover, we intend to immortalise Ambassador Olusola with a couple of awards in his name, and if possible a scholarship for best Student in theatre Arts and Mass communication, also in his name.

We are using this medium to appeal to all corporate bodies to join us in keeping this vision alive. I could recollect how passionate Baba was about the Nigerian Broadcasters Awards; he even told me that the idea (NBA) must not die.”

Ambassado Olusola, who earned several chieftaincy titles, worked as an actor, playwright, and was a founding member of “Players of the Dawn,” an amateur outfit that dominated the theater scene until the end of the 1950’s decade.

He had a reputation as one of Africa’s leading art connoisseurs and his resume as a brilliant broadcaster began in 1959 when he became one of Africa’s pioneering television broadcasters with the debut of television transmission in Nigeria at the WNTV, Ibadan. May his soul rest in peace (Amen).