By S. Siapha Mulbah
The Liberia Football Association (LFA) 2024 awards committee under the leadership of Christopher Hayes Onanuga as chairperson, has highlighted prospecting reforms for the program as the Committee targets to celebrate Liberian football heroes in a different way.
As a way to improve transparency and accountability for the LFA award ceremonies which has been reportedly marred by some forms of controversies during past editions, Hayes Onanuga and his awards committee for 2024 has announced a total of 28 awards to be presented this year to football icons with many categories nomination getting through the system from match statistics from the last football season.
Addressing a media conference on Tuesday November 26, 2024 at the local football house, the committee’s chairperson expressed deep concerns of how different stakeholders in the sports sector continue to contribute to the growth of the game without being recognized and celebrated in the best way for their job done.
He said, now is the best time for Liberians to see the need in properly celebrating athletes and other stakeholders of different sports especially football while they are alive and in action to keep up the practices of sportsmanship.
Onanuga said, serving the opportunity afforded him by LFA has given him and his team on the committee the passion to work extensively to make sure that the 2024 Award is conducted successfully, yielding the necessary results without any form of controversies that can be controlled under their watch.
In his remarks to the sports media engagement, he explained that the pending edition of the ceremony will be held in two phases on December 7, 2024 at the Ministerial Complex where football actors will know the actual appreciation of the game they play and be motivated by the elaborate celebration.
The committee has set a total of 28 different awards to be presented in more than eight different categories to include: The most valuable player, fair play teams, best referee, best coach, best defender and many more.
He added that this year’s ceremony will witness the introduction of new awards like the best young player, best foreign player and most disciplined player awards as a means of improving the game directly on the playing pitch.
While it is true that the awards committee respect the contribution of the fans to every club and football community in Liberia, the chairperson however noted that this year awards will not have ‘Fan of the Year’. This makes it the second occasion in a row that Fans recognition will not be witnessed at the annual football award.
Onanuga explained that the committee is working on ensuring that more categories be added to the awards with the galvanization of the needed support to make things grow bigger.
He noted that the award is currently focused on what grows the sport while the teams are given the space to focus on what grows their fan base.
This decision has given rise to the introduction of the Most Disciplined player and other new awards to attract the players to playing more professional football as a way of beautifying the game for the future.
Meanwhile, the LFA Award committee has outlined that voting process for various nominees will take place in some categories involving the media along with coaches and captains of various clubs while other categories will straightly do with match statistics.
For the media awards, Onanuga intimated that the independent media evaluation panel will receive entries of media personnel to be evaluated for the ‘Best Photo Journalist of the Year’ and the ‘Best Sports Reporter of the Year’.
The voting process through the LFA Award platform started November 26, 2024 and will end midnight on December 2, 2024 according to the awards committee.
