Igali lauds NSA for individual wrestling award

President of the Nigeria Wrestling Federation, Daniel Igali has commended the organisers of the Nigerian Sports Award for creating a unique category for Wrestling in the award.

The organisers have stated that wrestling, which was nominated among the Combat Sports Personality of the Year award category in the previous years, will now have a special mention in this year’s edition as ‘Wrestler of the Year award’.

“It is a good development for the award and the Wrestling Federation as well as the athletes. This has shown that the organisers have recognised the impact of wrestlers both locally and at the international stage.

“In the last year’s edition of the award, I observed that some other sports like football and athletics had special different categories in the award like Footballer of the Year and Athlete of the Year. And I said that Wrestling should have a different category in the awards based on our achievement and I am happy that the organisers have deemed it fit to recognise us which will go a long way to boost the award in so many ways,” Igali said.

Igali, who shared the accolade for Administrator of the Year with Enitan Oshodi in last year’s edition, said the new category of the award would go a long way to boost the athletes’ morale to do more in their field.

“There is no division among the athletes and this will not bring any to them, rather it will be an added advantage for them to do more. Everybody should do their best to win the award,” he added.

2014 Commonwealth Games gold medalist Odunayo Adekuroye won the award for Sports Woman of the Year, as well as Combat Sport of the Year in the 2017 edition, following a stellar year that saw her claim a silver medal in freestyle wrestling at the World Wrestling Championships in France last year.

Nominations are now open for the 2018 edition of the Awards as entries from the general public for the various award categories starts on May 23 and runs through October 7, 2018.

The Executive Director, Unmissable Incentives Limited, Mr Kayode Idowu revealed that the nominations can be done through the website – www.nigeriansportsaward.com/nominations and via the various social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in order to drive massive participation from the public.