The editors of Y! – TV, Magazine & Online – today announced the shortlist for Y!/YNaija.com Person of the Year 2017.

The Y!/YNaija.com Person of the Year is in its seventh year and is awarded to the individual who through acts of social good, personal achievement or innovation has the most outsize impact on the Nigerian society in the past year, breaking new boundaries or consolidating on gains – and driving the advancement of the public, especially young people.

The editors announced there was no winner for its first edition in 2011. The 2012 winner was entrepreneur and Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote. The 2013 winner was tech industry trailblazer, Jason Njoku and the 2014 winner was Obiageli Ezekwesili for championing active citizenship and entrenching the idea of the ‘Office of the Citizen’. In 2015, citizen Josephine Ugwu, the honest airport cleaner who found and returned the precious sum of N12 million in cash was named Person of the Year and in 2016, The Nigerian Paralympics team was chosen as Person Of The Year for their excellent outing at 2016 Summer Olympics.

The shortlist is announced following the decision of editors as well as feedback from readers and social media audiences. Voting commences today, Saturday, December 09 and closes on Saturday, December 23.

The Y!/YNaija.com Person of the Year 2017 shortlist:

Njideka Akunyili-Crosby, Arts and Culture

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Politics

Lola Shoneyin, Enterprise

The Nigerian Bobsled Olympic Team, Sports

Nathaniel Bassey, Religion

Nnamdi Kanu, Politics

Wizkid, Entertainment

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Enterprise

Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo, Politics

Herbert Wigwe, Enterprise

 

The profiles:

Njideka Akunyili-Crosby – 34

Multi-disciplinary artist Njideka Akunyili-Crosby had a near insurmountable legacy to beat. The daughter of globally renowned Nigerian public servant, Dora Akunyili, Njideka Akunyili-Crosby left Nigeria as a teenager to study visual art in the United States, at a time when it was unfashionable to major in the arts. That first migration impacted Njideka‘s life so greatly that it has become the main thematic arc of her groundbreaking work, exploring the liminal spaces between her identity as the child of a Nigerian diplomat and her public persona as an American artist, creating deeply personal, sprawling visual autobiographies. Akunyili-Crosby has shown her art in some of the most respected galleries and museums in the world and in 2017 she was honoured with a Mac Arthur Fellowship grant, the most prestigious honour given to artists in creative fields. She also became the first contemporary Nigerian artist to sell her art for over $3 million.

 

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo –  60

2017 has been a pivotal year for Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, after a year and half of being touted as an ineffective concession to ethnic diversity on the ballot during the 2015 elections. Spurred to action by the unavoidable absence of the President for 105 days of 2017, Osinbajo effectively took action, weathering conflicts in the Niger-Delta and brokering a tenuous treaty with creek militants. He also helped guide the country out of its two-year economic slump, negotiated peace with the agitated communities of Nigeria’s South East who had been clamouring for secession and took action on the matter of the extra-judicial killings between Fulani Herdsmen and their host communities. All of this he did with grace and unwavering confidence in the power of the people to always choose peace over conflict.

 

Lola Shoneyin – 43

In 2017, Lola Shoneyin through the Book Buzz Foundation and the Ake Book and Arts Festival brought internationally renowned female writers like Mona Eltahawy, Nnedi Okorafor, Zukiswa Banner and Ayobami Adebayo to Nigeria, as part of a stellar guest list of 100 writers, artists and creators. When Shoneyin started the Book and Arts Festival in 2013 it was with the express intention of growing it into the biggest Book Festival in the continent. Five years after its inauguration, it is arguably the biggest book festival in West Africa, drawing thousands of young readers and enthusiasts and fostering important conversations about race, gender, sexuality, politics, religion and health through the lens of literature. Shoneyin also started Ouida Books in 2016, an indigenous publishing house that publishes critically acclaimed writers like Odafe Atogun, Ayobami Adebayo and Tade Thompson and along with the Book Buzz Foundation has created an organic closed ecosystem that cements her place as arguably become the most influential woman in Literature in West Africa.

 

Nathaniel Bassey

2017 was an important year for the gospel in Nigeria. Many traditional churches were moved to consider unconventional ways to reach the unsaved, with churches like The Water Brook and The Tribe Lagos subverting the common conventions around religious worship and embracing new, millennial influenced avenues for community and communion. There was also a proliferation of the gospel on social media, but none as successful as religious pioneer Nathaniel Bassey. The singer and minister who has been active in religious worship for more than 20 years started the ‘Hallelujah Challenge’, a month-long religious challenge that asked Christians to congregate via social media streaming platforms like Facebook Live and Instagram Live, worshipping along as Bassey and his band prayed, sang and shared testimonies. An estimated 3 million people across the globe tuned into worship with Bassey during the ‘Hallelujah’ challenge. Bassey was able to also take the experience offline, having a worship event in Lagos. He is easily 2017 most recognisable religious figure.

 

The Nigerian Bobsled Team (Seun Adigun, Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga)

When Seun Adigun, Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga decided they wanted to represent Nigeria at the 2018 Winter Olympics, they did so knowing exactly how badly the cards were stacked against them. No African team had ever fielded a team at the Winter Olympics, hindered by a complex web of weather, inadequate funding. But the girls were undeterred, even after their petition to the Nigerian Sports Commission seeking funding and a coach to help them prepare for the Olympics were ignored. They decided to go it alone, raising the funding themselves through crowdfunding sites. In 2017, after several obstacles, they qualified for the Winter Olympics, galvanising the nation behind them and making history in the process.

 

Nnamdi Kanu

There have been few men whose life, work and motives have been as closely monitored and strongly discussed as Biafran separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu. Through a digital radio station, Radio Biafra, Kanu began the process of advocating the secession of South Eastern Nigeria as a way to finally address the often ignored atrocities that characterised Nigeria’s only Civil war, the war crimes that were committed and the lives that were irreparably damaged in the process. In 2015, Kanu was arrested on accusations of treason, elevating his profile significantly and drawing persons to his cause. He was released in 2017 on bail and not long after began the process of secession, instituting a Biafran currency, military and civil service. The drive for secession came to a head in September 2017 when Kanu directed militia loyal to Biafra to obstruct elections in Anambra State. Kanu‘s whereabouts are currently unknown. His antics is forcing Nigeria to address the long-held grievances the Igbo ethnic group in Nigeria has held and has gradually providing avenues for dialogue and resolution.

 

Wizkid – 27

It is somewhat redundant at this point to say that Ayodeji ‘Wizkid’ Balogun has had a great year. In fact, you wouldn’t be remiss to say that Wizkid has had a great decade, consistently growing as an artist since his debut in 2008 and championing the cause for Nigerian Afro-pop in global spheres. In 2016, he was one of a handful of Nigerian artists to sign major publishing deals with international music giant Sony RCA records, and not long after he went on to record the biggest song of 2016 alongside Canadian megastar Drake and Asian pop star Kyla. One Dance shattered billboard records and gave Wizkid his first Grammy nomination as well as several billboard awards.

Riding on the success of his collaboration with Drake and the international attention it brought him, Wizkid collaborated with a whole roster of international artists before bringing Drake to feature on his debut single as an international recording artist for “Come Closer”, which recently went gold in the United Kingdom. Wizkid‘s 2017 album under RCA records “Sounds from the Other Side” was well received by international music critics and charted favourably across the world. Building on that success he was recently nominated for the Best African Act at the 2017 Europe Music Awards, and he returned to Nigeria in November to receive the award for the best male artist at the Africa wide AFRIMA awards. On November 29, he won the Best International Act at the 2017 MOBO Awards. Adored by his Nigerian fans and steadily gaining ground internationally, Wizkid proves that you can come from Ojuelegba and conquer the world.

 

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji – 26

Flutterwave seems an ironic name for the business that has made Iyin Aboyeji sit still for the last two years. It is also ironic considering that Flutterwave, Aboyeji‘s answer to the age-old Nigerian problem of transacting electronic business in a country where nothing seems to work recently won the highly coveted Fintech Award at the 2017 Apps Africa digital innovation awards. Not bad for a digital payments platform/startup that was created with the primary reason of easing transactions in local businesses. Like most businesses in Nigeria, innovation is pushed by inaccessibility and conflict.

Perhaps it was conflict that made Aboyeji move back to Nigeria from Canada after creating Bookneto, his answer to online learning with as minimal glitches as possible. After he was bought out by the Canadian Innovation Centre, he took his things and returned to Nigeria. He tried some ill-fitting businesses and had to abandon the highly potentialed “Fora”, a potential online learning platform that devolved into a sales store for online courses.

Andela, a talent accelerator was the thing that really put him on the map, that and his insistence to make it on his own terms. Funding came for Andela from Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook himself and after a personal visit by Zuckerberg himself, Aboyeji knew it was time for Andela to find its footing without him at the helm and left to focus on Flutterwave. The rest they say is history.

 

Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo – 55

Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo is the rare Northern politician who has stayed under the radar, focusing on nation-building instead of party politics. The governor who was sworn in 2011 has spent the bulk of his administration working to improve the quality of life for the average citizen in Gombe through widescale infrastructural projects, building a 3000 km network of roads and bridges connecting the state’s cities and townships to its capital and the rest of the country. Dankwambo has also encouraged personal achievement through sports and creative arts, supporting the state’s football and basketball teams and creating platforms for the state’s young artists to express themselves and find new avenues to wrangle with important socio-political issues. The governor has also encouraged agriculture through farming loans and irrigation projects and enterprise through economic tax incentives. He proves there are more than one way to bring a state to prosperity.

 

Herbert Wigwe – 51

In 2014, Mr. Herbert Wigwe was announced as the CEO and Group Managing Director of Access Bank Plc, succeeding Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede. Since he took the reins he has steered the company through major mergers, economic recessions and transnational expansions, ensuring the company’s continued prosperity. But Wigwe‘s tenure as CEO has also marked a shift in the company’s policy towards corporate responsibility, ensuring that the company’s impact is felt in all spheres of Nigerian society. Wigwe through Access Bank has sponsored a number of important social projects including the Women in Business conference (WIMBIZ), the Ake Book and Arts Festival, The Access/Unicef Charity Shield Polo Tournament geared towards raising funding for at-risk Children. Wigwe personally chairs the Nigerian Business Coalition Against AIDS and has reiterated his commitment to progress through philanthropy.

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There will be no award or ceremony for the Y!/YNaija.com Person of the Year 2017. The winner will be notified formally and an announcement made to the public on Saturday, 30 December, with an essay detailing rationale, impact and significance.

The public can begin to vote below.

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