Plans are now on top gear for Nollywood Movies Award (NMA), which is now in its third edition, to hold on October 18, 2014, inside Intercontinental Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos, to celebrate the best in the country’s movie entertainment industry.
Last year, a star prize of a Nissan saloon car was won in a live ballot on the award night by O.C. Ukeje.
Briefing newsmen on this year’s annual prestigious NMA award, the duo of Nollywood Movies TV executive directors, Dipo Winsala and Alfred Soroh, in a collaboration with a London-based SKY 329TV station, supplier of content to other television stations in the United Kingdom, disclosed this.
The NMA team accompanied by a team from Media Specialities, collaborating advertising agency for the event, stated that the 2014 event will be hosted in commemoration of Nigeria’s centenary anniversary, as 2014 marks the 100thyear of Nigeria since its Northern and Southern parts amalgamated. Thus, the theme for this year is “100% Nollywood” hence, double in celebration and glamour.
With the award categories expanded to 30 this year, the NMA centenary edition among other objectives, seeks to showcase Nigeria’s culture and bring the awareness of Nollywood into the Diaspora and beyond. It also aims to show to people who have not visited home for a long time, or have never been to Nigeria how diverse and rich the country’s cultural heritage is.
In 2012, the inaugural award was staged to give back by way of recognition into an industry that has brought over 1 million jobs to Nigeria and remains one of the country’s biggest exports after crude oil.
Concurrently, Nollywood Movies (Sky 329) will be running a UK-based campaign on its station, which is received across Europe.
In addition, a number of media collaborators like GoTV, AIT cable channel, ONTV, Silverbird TV, among others, will add to the reach of millions of viewership across the globe.
It is expected that at the height of the campaign, awareness of the event would have spread across Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. Far beyond the one-day gathering of who-is-who is the Nollywood industry, the award according to the brain behind the annual event, will continue to be the focus of subsequent news and Nollywood-related chat shows transcending the borders of the country and the continent in general.
This year’s Nollywood Movies Awards showcases a number of categories. Each of the category nominees has been voted for by a multinational panel of independent Nollywood watchers, most of whom are experienced film academics.
The Nollywood “most popular” awards are decided by the general public through online and text voting. In previous years, votes were registered from all over the world including the UK, Europe, the Caribbean, North and South America, and Africa.
MIKE OCHONMA
