Organisers of Uncelebrated Nigerians Awards UK agree on final list of 57

ORGANISERS of the Nigerian Uncelebrated Awards (UNA) UK finalised the list of the 57 awardees who will be honoured in the 2017 event due to take place at the Mayfair Banqueting Suite in Chadwell Heath on September 30.

Now in its second year, the event will be a classy gala dinner that will attract community leaders, guests from Nigeria and high commission officials. Organised to honour ordinary Nigerians in the UK who are excelling in numerous fields, the awards ceremony has been organised to honour ordinary Nigerians who have generally been overlooked in the past.

Yesterday, the organising committee finalised the list of 57 awardees who will be honoured at the event and it includes several well-known but so-far unheralded community figures. Among those on the list are community leaders, faith workers, those who run charities, teachers, councillors, fashion designers, printers, entertainers, doctors, pharmacists and disc jockeys, among others, who will all be honoured with plaques and certificates on the night.

Ronke Udofia, the chair of the UNA awards sub-committee, said: "It was a very painstaking process but we wanted it to be transparent, so went the extra mile. We scored each nomination individually and then tallied up the score each got based on our criteria and picked the top 57 with the highest score."

"Unlike other awards ceremonies that only honour public figures and VIPs, UNA recognises ordinary working Nigerians in the UK like bus drivers, teachers, care workers, train conductors, etc. Our first criteria is that to win a UNA award, you must not have been awarded elsewhere, so we had to check each of our 171 nominees individually to make sure they had not got an award elsewhere."

Bola Ganiyu, the chair of UNA's events management sub-committee added: "We want to assure all awardees and their guests that UNA 2017 will be unbelievable as we have secured the hall until 4am in the morning. The night will be a mixture of awards, entertainment and fun and the cuisine will be unique as we will have a variety of Nigerian dishes that have not been served at other events before.

"For just £50 for standard tickets and £75 for VIP tickets, guests will be treated to an evening they will never forget. We have got a lot of high profile VIP guests coming over from Nigeria and we are looking at a mixture of entertainers from Nigeria and the UK diaspora."

Malcolm Benson, the chair of the publicity and marketing sub-committee added that among the distinguished guests who have been invited to UNA 2017 include the acting high commissioner Simon Ogah, the chair of the House of Representatives Committee on the Diaspora Rita Orji, the special adviser to the president on diaspora affairs Abike Dabiri-Erewa and the Ooni of Ife Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi. He urged members of the public who want to book tickets to attend the event to the website http://www.uncelebratednigeriansawardsuk.org