Organisers Plan 2 Voters Per State For Nigeria Pitch Awards

Shina Philips, initiator and president of the Prestigious Nigeria Pitch Awards, Pastor Ighodalo , Partner SIAO , President of Nigeria Referees Association, Tade Azeez holding the Nigeria Pitch Awards Statuette which was designed and produced in Spain, while the 1st Vice President of the NFF, Seyi Akinwummi looks on.

 

Organisers of the Nigeria Pitch Awards, Matchmakers Consult International Limited, have hinted that the voting patterns for the 2020 edition of the prestigious awards would take a new turn which will give the results wide coverage and transparency.

The Nigeria Pitch Awards are presented to Nigerian former and present sports people, administrators and journalists in recognition of their positive contributions to sports in Nigeria. It is approved by the Nigeria Football Federationhe, NFF.

P.M. EXPRESS can exclusively reports that going forward from after this year’s award, each state of the federation will produce two voters including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. The essence of this is to give the voting process wide coverage, very tight and transparency.

“Our intention is not to favour any state to have more than two voters because there are complaints in some quarters that Lagos state has been favoured too much in the voting. So we are trying to disabuse the minds of the people that we are transparent in what we are doing,” said one of the organisers who craved for anonymity because the issue is still being discussed at the top management level.

“I can tell you that the plan of two voters per state will be approved. Let me tell you something, there has been clamouring that we should open the voting process to the members of the public, I mean the fans.

“I must confess, opening it to the public is more profitable for us to make fans to vote, but we believe that it is better for us to restrict this to the professionals so that the real winners will emerge at the end of the day.

“The fans can be subjective and bring in sentiment when voting, and the reason we limit the voters to members of the media is because football is their job, they analyse and criticise it and more importantly they are stakeholders with high level of intellect.

“We also know the amount of resources club owners and players put into football, so winners of these awards must be determined by professionals. Allowing fans to votes will be inimical to the standard we are setting for the awards and the future we are looking forward to.

“On the part of the media categories of Nigeria Pitch Awards, we allow the media men and women to determine who win the awards because we believe that they know themselves and they are in the best position to form good opinion of who win. In fact, we go to the extent of allowing a voter to vote for himself or herself and be voted for again, but they don’t know themselves.

“What we want to achieve is a process that is thorough, credible, and transparent with honesty and trust. The votes will be vetted by an independent verifying body, the SIAO. We are doing a professional service on patriotic term,” the source said,