Board Declares No Winner For 2025 Nigeria Prize For Science

Advisory Board of The Nigeria Prize for Science has announced that nary victor emerged for the 2025 edition, pursuing the judges’ dissatisfaction with the prime of entries received.

At a property briefing successful Lagos, Prof. Barth Nnaji, president of the advisory board, explained that aft a rigorous adjudication of the 112 entries submitted this year, nary was recovered suitable for the prize.
He stated that the hard determination reinforced the Board’s committedness to upholding the integrity of the enactment process and protecting the estimation of the prestigious Nigeria Prize for Science.

He noted that the Prize is astir rewarding technological output and safeguarding the values of creativity, originality, and technological rigour that specify genuinely outstanding work.

“To little the barroom would beryllium to betray the public’s spot and diminish the bequest of the Prize itself,” Prof. Nnaji affirmed.

He commended the courageousness and dedication of each who submitted entries, noting that their efforts bespeak subject and a tendency to lend to nationalist and planetary technological discourse.

He stressed that excellence was beyond effort and required innovation, mastery of craft, and the quality to permission a lasting people connected quality thought and development.

The Board president called connected Nigerian scientists, researchers, and innovators to beryllium inspired by the judges’ verdict to bash much and strive higher.

“The Nigeria Prize celebrates lone the finest achievements, enactment that embodies originality, withstands scrutiny, and elevates technological discourse. Where these qualities are absent, we cannot, successful bully conscience, bestow the Prize,” helium stated.

This 2025 result is not unprecedented. In erstwhile years, successful 2005 and 2007, during the hiatus betwixt 2011 and 2016 and again successful 2021, the Nigeria Prize for Science was not awarded.

Prof. Nnaji admonished Nigerian scientists that the precocious barroom acceptable for the Prize should not discourage aboriginal information but reenforce that the Prize volition ne'er compromise connected its technological innovation and excellence standards.

The Advisory Board besides announced that the taxable for this year, “Innovations successful ICT, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Digital Technologies for Development”, volition beryllium repeated for the 2026 edition.

The Board stated that the determination was taken to pull a broader spectrum of innovators, peculiarly successful the emerging tract of Artificial Intelligence.

The Advisory Board unveiled the members of the sheet of judges. They see Dr Omobola Johnson, the Chairperson of the Panel of Judges for The Nigeria Prize for Science, and a Senior Partner astatine TLcom Capital. Omobola Johnson drives concern and worth instauration successful exertion companies crossed sub-Saharan Africa. She antecedently served arsenic Nigeria’s Minister of Communication Technology (2011–2015) and spent implicit 25 years astatine Accenture, including 5 years arsenic Country Managing Director.