The Future Nigeria

CENTRAL WORKING COMMITTEE REPORT ON NOMINATIONS FOR THE FUTURE AWARDS 2010
Lagos, Nigeria – December 8, 2009
As usual, The Future Awards received thousands of nominations this year. The Central Walking Committee (herein after referred to as “the committee”) was gratified to see that the town hall meetings across the country were not in vain, as there was a noticeable increase in the width and depth of the nominees for the year, which also showed a steady growth from other years.
The long list was unveiled after two months of calling for nominations, and the town hall meetings held across eight states of the federation (Osun, Adamawa, Edo, Rivers, Cross River, Enugu, Abuja and Kaduna), as well as in Accra, Johannesburg, Manchester and London (all held courtesy of HiTV), reaching out to young Nigerians all over in order to get a fine spread of nominations and participation.
This is the awards’ fifth edition.
As always, the committee got a wide depth and breadth of nominees from across Northern and Southern parts of the country, as well as United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ghana, Cotonou, South Africa and others. The committee is also gratified that the well known names on the list constitute a little less than 40% of the nominees, meaning that new stars in different sectors are indeed being discovered.
The awards remain for young persons between the age of 18 and 31, rewarding them across 20 broad categories. The nominees are all Nigerian citizens who must demonstrate talent, hard work and achievement with the period under review being 1 November 2008 to 4 December 2009.
As usual, the award categories were decided upon after an extensive meeting with a Resource Group, which reviewed the past year and deciding what areas and sectors young Nigerians most excelled in. The major aim of that being to ensure that by celebrating them for their achievements in the past year and by recognising excellence in those sectors, we sustain them, create a window for continued growth and then challenge other sectors to take a cue. The Future Awards is thus a revolving door for positive change.
In the Musician of the Year Category, the committee decidedly ignored celebrity for hard facts of achievement, noting album releases, music awards and steady relevance in addition to artistic substance. From an artiste like MI who has won all the major awards to the Rooftop MCs, who have, with their own efforts, toured campuses across the country and drawn impressive crowds, we recognise them.
The Actor of the Year focused on the volume of work done, which is contemporaneous with the tempo in Nollywood, on which nominees like Mercy Johnson, leading lady for the English-language movies, and Mercy Aigbe, for Yoruba-language movies have made the list. However, there are other nominees like Omoni Oboli who made the list for strong appearances in two genre-defining films, The Figurine and Silent Scandal. There was also a stage actor, giving a nod to the validity and growth of that sub sector.
The On-Air Personality of the Year awards for TV and radio as usual underline the continued excellence of young people on these media platforms, sustaining what has been a decade of continued successes in Nigerian television and radio. Magazine of the Year also finds enterprising people who, despite the shameful paucity of advertisers’ funds, have continued to publish quality magazines that are popular.
The same spirit drives categories like Creative Artist of the Year and Music Producer of the Year, celebrating sustenance in those sectors – though this is on different levels for both of them. While music production has grown contemporaneously with the growth of the music industry and young people have been the drivers, for artist of the year it is different, in fact, all the factors exist for the artist category to be empty – yet, under the radar and without funding and publicity, young people in the arts (apart from the performing arts) have continued to build admirable work profiles and portfolios, and even across the world. Silently and effectively.
Screen Producer of the Year continued in the tradition of The future Awards in bunching categories. As has been explained on the website for years, The Future Awards is focused on work profile, rather than a specific interrogation of particular works, i.e. musicians don’t win for one song or one album and actors don’t win for one movie, but for a body of work. Also, we are not interested in having numerous categories, because that proliferation is what sadly has watered down awards processed in Nigeria.
By making it such a tight process with just a handful of categories, we ensure that only the very best make it to the top. Screen producer therefore is one of those bunched categories; identifying young people who have excelled behind the screen, be there in the movies or television, and whether they be producers, directors or editors.
The Best Use of Science categories was one of the new categories introduced this edition. Unlike our tradition, a good number of the science nominees are in the intermediate stages of their work; however we were convinced that their works are of such brilliance, and so very practical to the realities of our society that we had to draw attention to them. Their works range from solutions to our power challenges to world recognised research on a cure for malaria, which remains a scourge for the African continent. Building on our development partnership with the Federal Ministry of Youth, we will be presenting these innovations and inventions to the government because we believe it would be a shame if the public does not pay attention to these ones.
Another challenging category was that for Excellence in Public Service. There were strong challenges, not surprisingly, of questionable achievements, unanswered questions and integrity constraints, so that it was almost shut down; however, doubling down on research and investigation led to expanding its scope rightly to include all those in institutional decision making. Therefore, we were able to find impressive young people in a wide range of areas from the UNFPA to the Federal Medical Centre, Makurdi.
Best Use of Technology, Best Use of Advocacy and Team of the Year are categories that The Future Awards is very proud of because almost nowhere else within our country would you find not just young people but anyone in these sectors singled out for reward. And it shows the void that this award process if filling, because year in, year out, we have found amazing young Nigerians in these categories who are breaking boundaries – again, this year, we again spoilt for choice.
Model of the Year was another category where the committee weas spoilt for choice. Many young people want to be models, and in the past half decade or so, some have managed to show that you can build a respectable, rewarding career in this. We feel it is a duty to those young people to continue to put modelling in the mainstream and in the spotlight.
And just with that category, we hope through Sportsperson of the Year to show young people alternative careers outride of the usual formal sector options. We also hope that, beyond the usual football personalities, young people will notice the others talented sportspeople highlighted in other sports: athletics, tennis and others.
The Journalist of the Year category had a wide pool of nominees from newspapers, news magazines up to soft sells. The list discovered impressive hard workers including investigative journalists – a band of young people who have at cost to themselves and risk to their lives sought to uncover facts to advance our collective national enterprise.
We replaced Comedian of the Year with Style Entrepreneur of the Year at the end of the nominations period. The reason is easy: there was a time when the comedy industry bloomed with amazing talent who were doing everything and doing it in a big way. Indeed, there are talented new voices doing great work now, but they are yet to fill the big shoes of their forebears. However, we see signals that this new cadre of comedians will rise to the challenge by next year.
Young people in the style industry however – make up artists, fashion designers, stylists and so on – have continued to, despite facing the prejudice of not being taken seriously, build strong businesses, creating value, creating jobs and flying Nigeria’s flag high from South Africa to New York. Whilst we initially sought to collapse this category into the Business Owner of the Year, it was very easy to pull out to fill the vacuum created by Comedian of the Year, because these young men and women in the fashion and style industry clearly stand out.
Generally, Business Owner of the Year is a category that gives plenty of cause for this country to be proud. The Future Awards movement has over the years recognised and emphasised that entrepreneurship and job creation are what will eventually drive our economy, and the self independence of its citizens. In fact, many of the other categories have young people who are entrepreneurs in their own rights. The Business Owner of the Year category however acknowledges those who have taken the bold step to create productions processes for themselves and to take the risk of standing on their own. From publishing to human resources to events and then to advertising, this year’s list is another journey of discovery.
We did something different for Young Person of the Year this year – which is the highest of the awards. Unlike with previous years, this time, once anyone was nominated in this category, that person was removed from any of the other categories (all except for Ify Aniebo, who is also in the science category, and that category was given an exception because of our stated determination to put science on a pedestal).
The implication for Young Person of the Year nominees is clear: their achievements are so impressive that they have gone beyond mere winners in the other categories; they are icons in their own rights. Once they are nominated for the big prize, they are as much as winners. That is why, unlike with other categories, there will be no finalists here: all Young Person of the Year nominees will be presented at the award and will be given scrolls of recognition before a winner is announced.
The inspiring young Nigerians who are nominees for this category are Tolu Ogunlesi, a winner at the CNN African Journalist of the Year awards; international recording artist, Asa; music producer and entrepreneur, Cobhams Asuquo; malaria researcher and scientist, Ify Aniebo; youth advocate Toyosi Akerele; movie producer and actor, Stephanie Okereke; dance professional Qudus Onikeku and Big Brother Africa 5 host, IK Osakioduwa.
This was a rich list from top to bottom, and they all truly give hope for a New Nigeria – representing the country positively around the world. They are certain to serve the purpose of inspiring the next generation of young Nigerians to take charge of the future; which is here now for the taking.
The two-month judging process – powered by an Independent Audit Committee and a Board of Judges – begins immediately. The awards presentation will hold on 7 February 2010 in Lagos, Nigeria.