The “The Future...” Awards is only for people between the ages of 18 and 31 (inclusive). After all the nominations are collated, the Core Group will make the long list of 8 per award (120 nominees). The Board of Judges will then scale it down to 75 - 6 people per award; this will then be sent to the Independent Audit Committee, who will take their time and scale it down to 45 - 3 people per award.
This will be sent back to the Board of Judges, who will meet and together decide the awards - who wins and who will be runners-up. This will finally go to the Chairman of the audit committee who will veto this final list.
You know what we call that in Nigeria, don’t you? Accountability! Probity! Transparency!

What do we want?
The criteria are simple, really. We want young people who have talent, who have worked hard, and have achieved a good measure of success – in the past five years (since this is the first edition).
But listen up, please! Do NOT be afraid to nominate anyone you think deserves to be nominated. If, for instance, you see Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, multiple award-winning author of Purple Hibiscus, and are intimidated by her well-deserved credentials, please don’t make that deter you from nominating your friend, XYZ who is a fantastic writer, has published a novel with a reputed publishing house, does not have any awards, but works bloody hard!

It’s simple: we want talent, hard work, and achievement – if you think you know someone that deserves it, then nominate her/him, and tell us why! Just make sure you give us your very good and convincing reasons, based on facts...

P.S: You’re wondering if you can nominate yourself if you think you’re good enough for any of the awards...? Well this we are trying to build a new crop of Nigerians... with new values ... and we do things differently... so, YES! You can nominate yourself. But the thing is you have to go the extra mile to convince us that you deserve the award...