BY ANTHONY ADA ABRAHAM
While growing up, we were taught to work hard to earn scholarships, awards and recognition. We worked hard in school, in our jobs and in our various endeavours because recognition was supposed to be a reward for contribution to society.
So, why has paying for awards and recognition suddenly become the in-thing?
The answer is simple: everybody is looking for the next conduit pipe to milk, and everybody who has done anything remotely reasonable is now a potential candidate for celebration provided they can afford it.
Of late, I have noticed that there are now over a thousand award-giving organisations celebrating people, not necessarily because of their contributions to society, but because they are connected to “big men”, politicians or individuals who can afford to pay for recognition.
Some mainstream media organisations have also joined this disturbing trend, giving awards to people of questionable character simply because they can donate hundreds of millions of naira to support such events.
Of course, there are people who have genuinely contributed to the growth of their industries and the nation and who deserve to be recognised. But the sad reality is that many of those receiving these awards do not merit them.
Speaking to an insider who did not want his name mentioned, I was told that many awards and awardees already have agreements and arrangements on how they want to be recognised. Some even pay to have the award presented or printed exactly the way they want it.
What then is the difference between an award and a purchased advertisement?
There are now international organisations organising awards, not necessarily to celebrate excellence, but to get gratification from the people they are supposedly honouring.
There are individuals who have organised and received more than 200 awards despite having done little or nothing remarkable for society. Some have even been involved in corruption cases with anti-graft agencies, not only in Nigeria but abroad.
Some have perfected this system to the extent of involving international organisations to partner with them, giving the whole arrangement an appearance of credibility.
Let me make it clear: there is nothing wrong with awards coming with financial or other material benefits. Genuine awards can boost the morale of recipients and encourage them to do more. There are top awards in Nigeria and abroad that come with substantial benefits, and they are rightly appreciated because they recognise genuine achievement.
But when recognition itself becomes a commodity for sale, we have a problem.
Awards in Nigeria are gradually making a mockery of the entire idea of recognition. It is becoming similar to what happened to the beauty pageant industry, which was infiltrated and turned into something else, with some organisers allegedly becoming pimps and exploiting young girls who were supposed to be competing for recognition.
Today, the beauty pageant industry has, as we say in local parlance, “Don Cast.”
The next oil well appears to be awards, and if care is not taken, the awards industry is heading in the same direction.
Many people will not be happy with this argument, but somebody has to call some of these people to order — especially mainstream media organisations that now promote awards and honour people of questionable character.
There is nothing wrong with people who are being honoured willingly supporting an event. There is everything wrong when recognition is deliberately monetised and becomes a condition for receiving an award.
An award should represent achievement, contribution, excellence and impact. It should not become another conduit pipe through which money changes hands while society is told that someone has suddenly become an icon.
If we continue down this road, the day will come when the value of an award will no longer be determined by what the recipient has achieved, but by how much he or she can afford to pay.
And when that happens, we would have succeeded in killing the very thing awards were created to celebrate: merit.
Anthony Ada Abraham is a renowned journalist, social commentator and critic who writes from Abuja.