Lagos, Nigeria - Nominees have emerged for the maiden edition of the Nigerian Sports Award being put together by Unmissable incentive Limited in partnership with Mastersports International. The list of the nominees was released by Unmissable Incentives at a Press briefing held on Tuesday, October 16, 2012 at Protea Hotel, Maryland, Lagos.
Speaking at the briefing, the General Manager, Unmissable Incentive, Mr. Kayode Idowu, revealed that 15 categories of the award have been approved by the Panel for this year after the nomination process which commenced on July 19, 2012 and ended on 28th September, 2012.
The categories include: Team of the Year Award, Footballer of the Year Award (Male), Footballer of the Year Award (Female), Ball sports Person of the Year Award, Special sports person of the Year Award, Sport Man of the year Award, Sport woman of the Year Award, Administrator of the Year Award, Lifetime Achievement in sports Award, Sports journalist of the Year Award (Print), Sports journalist of the year Award (Electronics).
According to Idowu, the Falconets, D' Tigers and Heartland FC are the teams nominated for the Team of the year Award while in the Coach of the Year Award, Okon Edwin, Head Coach of Falconets, Head Coach Power Lifting, Feyisetan Are, and Head Coach of the Tigers, Ayodele Bakare are in contention.
The Footballer of the year Award for the Male category will be a battle among John Mikel Obi, Osaze Odemwingie and Ikechukwu Uche. Francisca Ordega, Perpetual Nwokwocha and Desire Oparanozie are up for the Female footballer of the year award.
"For Ball sports personality of the year Award, Ike Diogu of Nigerian Basketball team, Funke Oshonaike (Table Tennis) and Segun Toriola, also Table Tennis fight for honours, while three members of the Nigerian Paralympics team Grace Anozie, Yakubu Adesokan, and Folashade Oluwafemiayo battle each other for glory in the Special sports personality of the year Award category" he said.
Commenting on the voting procedure, the Chairman of the award panel, Ikeddy Isiguzo explained that the public would be allowed to vote in 3 categories which are; Team of the year Award, Sports man of the year Award and Sports woman of the year Award while the rest of the categories would be decided by the panel. He however noted that the public vote will only account for 60% of the judging criteria while 40% mark would be decided by the panel.
Isiguzo explained that voting will be via SMS at the cost of N50 per SMS and for participants to vote, they would be required to text the abbreviation of the category to 33140. For instance, the public can text TOTY for the team of the year award to 33140 or SMOTY and SWOTY for the sportsman and sportswoman award of the year respectively.
He announced that voting will commence on Tuesday 16th October, 2012 and closes on Monday, 19th November, 2012. He noted that there will be weekly draws from 30th October to 20th November to reward 5 people weekly with 1 32" LCD TV, 2 mobile phones and 2 invites to the event every week through electronic draws.
