Unmissable Incentives, organizers of the Nigerian Sports Award, has announced the shortlist of nominees for the 2018 edition of the prestigious sports awards ceremony.
At a press briefing in Lagos on Wednesday, the Chairman of NSA panel, Dr. Kweku Tandoh, announced nominees for the different categories, including Footballer of the Year, Team Sports Person of the Year, Track and Field Star of the Year, Sports Governor of the Year and Sports Administrator of the Year.
Tandoh, who was highly excited about the massive response of the public towards nominations, which opened on May 23, 2018 and closed on October 7, 2018, expressed delight that the award was moving a notch higher considering the number of nominations received this year – over two million.
Other award categories to be voted for include Racket Sports Person of the Year, Basketball Player Of the Year, Para Sports Person Of The Year, Team of the Year, Discovery of the Year, Wrestler of the Year, Coach of the Year, Sportswoman of the Year and Sportsman of the Year
Tandoh however noted that the remaining four categories of the awards: Journalist of the Year (Radio), Journalist Of The Year (Television), Photo Journalist Of The Year and Journalist of the Year (Print), would not be open to public voting but all interested media professionals are required to submit any three works of theirs published or produced and aired (not more than 90 seconds) between November 2017 and November 2018. Deadline for all submission in these categories is November 4, 2018.
Speaking further on the process for selection of the nominees, Tandoh noted that the final selection of nominees was done on Wednesday by all award panel members after a careful scrutiny of the nominations entries received.
He said: “We are quite excited that public interest on the award has grown significantly given the number of nominations received this year for the awards.
“For us, we have taken time to look at the nominees for the different categories and I can proudly say that the nominees selected for the categories deserve to be winners by all standard.”
On the voting process for this year’s edition of the awards, Executive Director of the awards programme, Kayode Idowu, revealed that voting for the shortlisted nominees in all 14 categories of the award opened on October 10, 2018 and ends on November 11, 2018.
Idowu stated that the public can vote on the official website of the award: www.nigeriansportsaward.com/voting, which is a recent addition to the available means of voting.
He explained that everyone can also vote via sms (Text the category tag and name of nominee to 33140, e.g. SMOTY + name of choice winner to 33140 for Sportsman of the year) or via social media (Instagram & Twitter) by tweeting/posting the category hashtag and name of nominee using the handle: @ngrsportsaward e.g. #SWOTY + name of choice winner @ngrsportsaward for Sportswoman of the year.
The award ceremony for the 2018 Nigerian Sports Awards is scheduled to hold at the Eko Convention Centre, Eko Hotel & Suite on November 16, 2018.