Organisers of The Headies, one of Nigeria’s most celebrated music awards have disqualified Habeeb Okikiola, the controversial singer better known as Portable, from this year’s edition of its awards.
On May 24, Portable was nominated for the ‘Best Street Artist’ and ‘Rookie of the Year’ categories.
In the ‘Rookie of the Year’ category, he was expected to compete with Av, Fave, Magixx, and Ugoccie.
For the second category, he was pitted against Bella Shmurda, Mohbad, Naira Marley, and Goya Menor among others.
Shortly after the nominations were unveiled, Portable claimed his co-nominees at The Headies are no match for him.
He also threatened to kill anyone who wins any of the categories in his place.
In its reaction, organisers of the awards threatened to disqualify him if he failed to retract his statement and issue an apology on his social media pages.
Portable had initially taunted the award organisers, saying they “nominated a mad man musician”.
The singer thereafter apologised for his “unguarded utterance” which he said was harmless.
But in a statement released on Tuesday evening, the award organisers said Portable was disqualified because he is a subject of an investigation relating to criminal activities.
Since he came into the limelight, Portable has been in the news for controversial reasons.
The Ogun State Police Command had recently invited him for allegedly asking his team to brutalise a young man.
