Organizers of the prestigious sports award, Nigerian Sports Award, have announced the shortlist of top nominees for the 2019 edition of the awards ceremony.
Speaking at a media briefing held in Lagos yesterday, the Chairman of NSA panel, Dr. Kweku Tando announced top three nominees for the different 15 categories of the awards including Footballer of the Year, Team Sports Person of the Year, Racket Person of the Year, Combat Person of the Year, Sports Administrator of the Year amongst others.
Top among the shortlisted nominees include Aruna Quadri, Olajide Omotayo and Anuoluwapo Opeyori all for Racket Person of The Year; Blessing Oborududu, Israel Adesanya and Odunayo Adekuoroye for Combat Person of the Year; Ese Brume, Evelyn Akhator and Odunayo Adekuoroye for Sportswoman of the Year 2019; D’Tigress, Nigerian Under-19 Team (HandBall) and Super Eagles for Team of the Year 2019.
Some of the other categories to be voted for include Basketball Player of the Year, Para-Sports Person of the Year, Discovery of the Year, Wrestler of the Year, Coach of the Year, Sports Person of the Year.
Tandoh who was full of excitement about the massive participation from the public during the nomination period between Tuesday, 11 June, 2019 and Sunday, 13th October, 2019, expressed gladness that the award has gained wide acceptance considering the number of nominations received this year – 805,669 entries.
Tandoh revealed that voting for the nominees in each of the 15 categories begins today, Thursday, October 24, 2019 and ends on Sunday, November 24, 2019, urging the general public to vote for any nominee of their choice.
Tandoh therefore 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 to submit any three (3) works of theirs published or produced and aired (not more than 90secs) between November 2018 and November 2019. Deadline for all submission in these 4 categories is Sunday, November 17, 2019.
Speaking further on the nomination selection process, Tandoh noted that the final selection of nominees underwent a series of rigorous assessment by all award panel members after the receipt of entries.
“We are quite excited that public interest on the award has grown tremendously considering the number of nominations received this year. For us, we have taken time to assess all nominations for the different categories and I can proudly say that the nominees selected for the categories deserve to be winners by all standards,” he said.
Speaking on the voting process for this year’s edition of the awards, Executive Director of the Award, Mr. Kayode Idowu revealed that the public are open to vote on the official website of the award: www.nigeriansportsaward.com/voting or via twitter polls which would be set up on the awards twitter account.