Afolabi  Aribigbola

Every day in Nigeria, awards of excellence are packaged and given to people generally. While some are deserving of them, a significant number of the recipients of the awards do not deserve them but obtained them as the highest bidder. Honouring individuals with awards for some unique achievement and ability and meritorious services is a widespread global phenomenon that has been in existence for a very long time. Award of excellence were introduced and instituted in virtually all societies including Nigeria to honour, recognise achievements and appreciate individuals or people who have excelled in their vocation and those who have made significant contributions to societal development. They could be bestowed on individuals or organisations that demonstrate significant breakthrough results and achievements in their areas of endeavours.
In a nutshell, the essence of awards in general is to recognise and reward persons of exemplary achievement, services and notable or outstanding contributions to societies. Several types of awards of honour and recognition exist. They range from award of excellence, outstanding achievement, long service, ability, distinction, honour for meritorious services and a host of others. In sum, they are bestowed on individuals, groups and organisations for significant and notable accomplishments and contributions to society. They serve as a mark of respect for spectacular achievements for those that receive them as well as to encourage upcoming individuals to put in more efforts, so as to be able to impact their world by creating records and breaking of past records.
As good and plausible as this universal practice of rewarding people is, the proliferation of such awards in Nigeria where most of them cannot stand the test of acceptable standard has become a source of concern to many people and have motivated discerning minds to begin to question the practice in the country. In the first place, do most people receiving awards with all sincerity worthy of such award being conferred on them? Also, do the awarding bodies have the experience, integrity and records of achievements that qualify them to confer an award? Of course, many of the awarding bodies do not really possess what it takes to grant an award. As will be seen later, most of their awards are usually reserved for politicians and money bags that would be ready to donate or purchase such an award.
Indeed it must be made crystal clear and without mincing words that some of the awards and the awarding authorities are quite good and meet acceptable standards. Suffice it to say that several quality awards exist in the country with high profile awarding organisations with track records of achievement and impacts to society. However, many a times, awards are given to individuals that are just coming up who still have a long way to go, and the awards are sometimes influenced by mundane and primordial sentiments, rather than achievement and service to humanity.
In Nigeria, instituting and conferment of awards have become a veritable means of making money by some individuals and organistions. I attended an award ceremony recently where most of the awardees were politicians and were subsequently invited to make donations. This instigated some reactions from some of us who view awards as a means of recognising and commending individuals for their past efforts and not a means to raise funds. Invariably, the said awards like many others in Nigeria were essentially instituted to raise funds rather than to serve as motivation, encouragement, and recognition of selfless service. I don’t think this is right and must be discouraged. This was why some individuals reject awards that are tied to donations.
Indeed, it must be emphasised that some of the awards are packaged by eminent people, individuals and corporate organisations qualified to institute and give awards to deserving, accomplished and outstanding members of the society. Such noble ventures are welcome and encouraged because they serve as impetus to encourage the upcoming generations to seek excellence and contribute to societal development. In other climes, such endeavours have propelled individuals and corporate organisations to venture to contribute more to the growth and prosperity of the society. Equally important is the fact that they assisted in creating standards for measuring performance and for those not doing well to improve on their performance and contributions to community development.
From the foregoing it is evident that bestowing awards of excellence on deserving members of a society is not a bad one. What is worrisome are the credentials of the individuals or arganisations conferring the awards. Also, the awardees or and recipients of the awards, with all sincerity of purpose, can they be said to merit the awards given then in context of Nigeria? In most cases an individual without any track record of service and achievement will just package awards and give it to individuals they considered to merit it, without a standardized way of measuring their achievements. Are they rarely justified or are motivated by allure to make money because of unemployment? The truth is that it has become an easy way of making money by smart individuals and groups in Nigeria especially from politicians and people of questionable character who might want to use such awards to launder their image. With regards to awardees again, are they qualified for such awards? Check the roll and yard sticks for such awards, they are often politicians and novel rich individuals that cannot explain the source of their wealth.
On a final note, the proliferation of unworthy awards in Nigeria has led to its bastardization to the extent that it is only the wealthy or money bags that can receive such awards. Only a few are reserved for achievers in the professions, services amongst others. Do we continue with this kind of charade? To my might, no! This is because essentially it has the capacity to continue to promote corruption, mediocrity and deceit that is prevalent in our society at the moment. It has not been encouraging and propelling hardworking Nigerians to contribute to the development of the society. Of course, it is pretty difficult to control, especially now that unemployment is on the upsurge and degenerated moral ethos, it will still continue. Men and women of high moral values should rise up to resist undeserving awards packaged to make the wealthy.
The need to control the proliferation of unworthy institution and bestowment of awards becomes indispensable and should be embraced by all stakeholders in the Nigeria project. This is absolutely necessary before it becomes a standard practice in the country. A situation where people who have not made any significant impact or contribution to development cannot be expected to promote hard work, dedication integrity and selfless service to the society. This is essentially what awards are meant to achieve generally. It is also required to eliminate allure to get rich quick syndrome as well as need to cover, protect and legitimize their unviable past activities by garnering awards that are invariably sponsored by them. Consequently, before any individual or groups are permitted to give awards such should have passed through screening and are adjudged a settable standard, instead of the present practice for all comers to institute awards without enviable track records of services to humanity.