Organisers call for nominations, as race for 5th Nigerian Sports Award begins

Organisers of the prestigious Nigerian Sports Award have explained that performance based on excellence will be used in picking athletes, coaches and sports administrators for this year’s award.

Nomination of athletes, officials and sports personalities for the 2016 edition of the Award commenced yesterday and will end on September 23.

This is the fifth edition of the award, and the organisers have fixed December 2 for the ceremony to take place at Eko hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Speaking in Lagos while unveiling plans for this year’s award ceremony yesterday, chairman of the Award panel, Ikeddy Isiguzo, said they expect to see names of athletes, players, coaches, sports administrators, sports journalists and photo journalists, who have performed very well at national, continental and global level.

“We have said it before that the Nigerian Sports Award is based on excellence performance. We will never deviant from that original concept. Even if only five persons are nominated at the end of the day, we will settle for that number because it is a standard we have set at the beginning of this journey five years ago,” he said.

Also speaking yesterday, the Executive Director, Unmissable Incentives Limited, Kayode Idowu, said the Nigerian Sports Award had built for itself a reputation of a credible and respectable award set up to recognize and reward outstanding performances by Nigerian Athletes.

According to Idowu, the categories include Ball Sports Person of the Year (Tennis, Table tennis, Basketball, handball), Coach of the Year, Combat Sports Person of the Year (Karate, Judo, Taekwondo, Wrestling, Boxing), Discovery of the Year, Footballer of the Year (Women), Footballer of the Year (Men), Special Sports Person of the Year, Sports Administrator of the Year and Sports Governor of the Year.

Others are; Sportsman of the Year, Sportswoman of the Year, Sports Journalist of the Year (Radio), Sports Journalist of the Year (TV), Sports Journalist of the Year (Print), Sports Photo Journalist of the Year, School Sport Award, Team of the Year, Track and Field Star of the Year and Weightlifter of the Year.

On the nomination process for the 2016 edition, Idowu highlighted that several social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook alongside the official award website – www.nigeriansportsaward.com would still be used to increase participation from the public.