It’s the Olympics Year and in celebration of outstanding women in diverse sectors, The Guardian is hosting the inaugural Guardian Woman Festival in recognition of International Women’s Month, themed: Inspiring Inclusion. With dominant track and field athletes hoping to win medals, the Super Falcons remain hopeful for an Olympic place with one game remaining in the qualifiers. As the festival beckons, some of the athletes nominated for the awards are in our spotlight.
TOBI AMUSAN (Track & Field Athlete – Hurdles)
OLUWATOBILOBA Ayomide ‘Tobi’ Amusan is a world record holder, world champion, three-time Diamond League Final winner, two-time Commonwealth Games winner and came fourth in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. At the time of writing, she is ranked second in the world for the women’s 100 metres hurdles and still holds the world record with a time of 12.12 seconds, set in the 2022 women’s 100 metres hurdles semi-final in Eugene, Oregon. In doing so, Tobi became the first Nigerian world champion and world record holder in an athletics event.
Amusan was born on April 23, 1997, in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State, Nigeria, and is the youngest of three children. From a young age, she excelled in athletics, claiming her first gold at the 2015 African Junior Athletics Championships in Addis Ababa. The same year, she won gold at her first All-Africa Games as an 18-year-old.
Alongside the 100 metres hurdles, Tobi also competes in the 4 x 100 metres relay, a pursuit the Nigeria team won at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
In 2023, Amusan graduated with a Master of Arts in Leadership Studies and Sports Management at the University of Texas at El Paso.
NEKU ATAWODI-EDUN (First Black Female Professional Polo Player)
NEKU Atawodi-Edun’s achievements are remarkable, especially set against the male-dominated world of polo. From an early age, she was determined to play polo; it was always a passion, and she worked from a stable hand to become the world’s first black female professional polo player. It’s a sport she excels in, but alongside her sporting career, she is an entrepreneur, sports scientist and philanthropist, setting up an organisation that helps children from disadvantaged backgrounds to find opportunities through equestrianism.
Atawodi-Edun was born in 1987 in Benue and raised in Kaduna, Nigeria, and the UK. She started getting involved in the Kaduna Polo Club, one of the oldest in Nigeria. Still fascinated by horses, she also earned a BSc in Equestrian Science at the University of Brighton. During her professional polo career, she played in more than 22 cities and won cups in Argentina and the US. She also organised the first-ever female tournament to be held in West Africa, back at the Kaduna Polo Club, in 2008. Today, Neku is the Sports Ambassador for Access Bank PLC. She is also the founder of Ride to Shine, a self-funded non-profit organisation that teaches young children about equestrian sports. Neku is also an Associate Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society, founder of Bamboo Green Concepts, a hotel and resort company based in Abuja, and a Global Shaper for the World Economic Forum.
ASISAT Lamina Oshoala is one of the most striking figures in women’s football across the globe, with her striking pink hair and exuberant style on the pitch. She is regarded as one of the best female football players of all time and the greatest African female player, having won the African Women’s Footballer of the Year a record six times. Her stella playing club career has seen signings for Liverpool, Arsenal, FC Barcelona Femení and, since February 2024, Bay FC based in San Francisco. She also plays for the Nigerian national female team, the Super Falcons, and was part of the winning African Women’s Championship team in 2016 and 2018.
In 2019, Asisat launched the Asisat Oshoala Foundation as a ‘vehicle to impact and inspire young girls and women to be their best expressions, in sports and other areas of endeavour’. This later led to the foundation of the Asisat Oshoala Academy in partnership with Women Win of Germany and Nike Inc. of USA. The academy is designed to ‘provide access to football and lifeskills for marginalised schoolgirls in Nigeria and the rest of the African continent’. It provides girls aged 12-18 with football training three times a week and life skills education.
ESE BRUME (Track & Field Athlete – Long Jump)
ESE Brume is one of the world’s greatest athletes. Excelling in the discipline of the long jump, Ese is the current holder of the Commonwealth Games record, a World Championship Silver medalist, an Olympic Games bronze medallist and the current African record holder. In the rankings of February 2024, she is in fourth place for the women’s long jump. Ese is known on the circuit for her big jumps and even bigger smiles. Her personal best is an astonishing 7.17 metres, at Chula Vista, California, in 2021 and she was the first African woman to jump beyond seven metres.
Brume was born in Ughelli, Delta State, on January 20, 1996, and excelled in the long jump from a young age, competing in the triple jump and 4 x 100 relay.
In 2014, she won gold at the Commonwealth Games and dedicated her win to Emmanuel Uduaghan, Delta State’s governor, who invested in track and field support. “I want to make young girls believe that all things are possible,” Brume told Olympics.com. “You know they can do exactly or even better than what I’m doing right now.”
“I’m not any super girl from one unique place. No, I’m a local girl from Ughelli. So if this local girl can do it, can come this far from nothing to become something, then you also can do it.”
She is also great friends with Tobi Amusan.
CHIAMAKA NNADOZIE (Super Falcons Goalkeeper)
CHIAMAKA Nnadozie is one of the youngest women nominated in this award category, at just 23. But in those short years, she’s risen to become one of the most famous female football players from Nigeria, impressing with her goalkeeping performances for the Super Falcons and becoming the team’s trusted captain. Chiamaka’s day job is goalkeeping duties for Paris FC, in the French Division 1 Féminine. She is generally regarded as one of the best female goalkeepers in the world.
Nnadozie was born on December 20, 2000, in Imo State, Nigeria. Standing at 1.80 metres, perhaps goalkeeping was somewhat inevitable, but she started off as a striker. It was her dedication from an early age, however, that led her to be world-class in goalkeeping and her personality that now sees her as captain of the Super Falcons.
She started her career at Rivers Angels in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, winning the NWPL league with them in the 2019-2020 season. She then signed with Paris FC at the beginning of 2020.
In 2023, Chiamaka played in her second World Cup finals, at 22. At her first tournament, she became the youngest goalkeeper in Women’s World Cup history to keep a clean sheet.
