Are national awards still relevant?

In the next few weeks , the government — in what has become its annual ritual — is expected to reel out all sorts of names as recipients of the national honours awards.

Unfortunately, rather than eliciting excitement, what do we have? Resentment and criticism continue to trail the awards and this raises the question as to whether the initial rationale for   the exercise is still present.

Ordinarily, national honours awards should be highly celebrated, cherished and treasured because they are hinged on the collective integrity of the nation and its peoples and are awarded to deserving persons who have made outstanding and meritorious contributions to their nation’s development in terms of education, industry, security, world peace, science, arts, technology, sports, culture or other significant public and private areas.

The philosophy of the gesture is to spur others to do better by serving as a morale booster or motivator towards  hard work, excellence, creativity and human virtues.

Regrettably, the history of the awards for several years now suggests that though some awardees really deserved the glory, it has been utterly skewed in favour of the  rich and few members of business and  political elite.

The awards were established through the National Honours Act No. 5 of 1964 and empower the President to make provision for the awards. The unwieldy number of people given the awards yearly also accounts for the loss of allure. Since the 1963, when the award was initiated, over 4,000 citizens and friends of Nigeria have been decorated under the various categories.

In the United States of America – after which we modelled our federalism — with its over 200 years of independence, there are just about 3,000 recipients of such awards. This is certainly a pointer to how prestigious the awards could be to a serious nation.

Due to its debasement, some notable Nigerians selected for the awards had tactfully rejected them to show their discontentment with the state of the nation. We still remember the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila; the social critic and former Petroleum Minister, Professor Tam David-West; the well respected late literary guru and author, Professor Chinua Achebe; and the late human rights activist, Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN).

As a matter of urgency, the awards should be reformed in the national interest. To begin with, a set of new criteria and template should be developed that will make it impossible for  people of questionable characters to be awarded such honours.

As obtainable in several progressive societies, awards are usually conferred only after the outstanding officials might have served out their terms meritoriously and are clearly seen to be above board. In our clime, it is widely believed that many awardees lobbied to be nominated, thus eroding its credibility, as those favoured were never the best or most-deserving officers.

On the micro level, this crisis of value system and bridled materialism could also be responsible for the indecorous practice where people of questionable characters are showered with chieftaincy titles while our ivory towers too have been accused of awarding honorary degrees to rich and influential politicians with little or no contributions to education, knowledge, humanity, tertiary institutions or the society in general.

To begin with, the eligibility criteria should be holistically reviewed and widely publicised in the media. In other words, the shortlisted candidates’ details should be published with sufficient time to enable members of the public to file objections or complaints and the process for adjudicating such objections should be generally acceptable, clear, transparent and expeditious.

Members of the public, as stakeholders, should have an ample role to play in the nominations while the government on the other hand should reduce its control over who gets honoured, to bring about transparency. There should be room to drop the names of anybody found to have been genuinely discredited at any stage of the exercise. This has never happened.

Again, there is the need to put in place a proper administrative machinery to organise and implement this important national assignment. It is disheartening to note that the previous awards ceremony had witnessed avoidable hiccups and lapses.

A number of persons advertised to receive the honours were often found to have indeed received the same class of honours previously while some who had received higher honours before were ignorantly downgraded. Do we then call this an honour or dishonour?

Perhaps, we have been experiencing the abnormality because of the calibre of the National Honours Award Committee and its modus operandi.

In view of the  shortcomings, President Goodluck Jonathan was right when he directed the “appropriate departments to note the concerns expressed and take steps to ensure further improvement so that the national honours awards can continue to serve their purpose”.

Several years ago, the National Honours Nominations Committee, headed by the late Alhaji Liman Ciroma, had slated for consideration, proposals for reform of the national honours process. As laudable as the proposal was, it was not allowed to see the light of the day!

Former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Alfa Belgore, and the Nigerian Bar Association had recently condemned the move to deny the President the exclusive powers to award national honours.

Belgore, the current Chairman of the National Award Honours Committee seems to disagree too with the idea of excluding serving public office holders from being recognised.

With this posturing, there is bound to be a dissonance between the line of thoughts of the committee and the feelings of Nigerians.

It will amount to a great disservice if the true heroes and heroines — the poor and the unheard but outstanding school teacher, missionary, pensioners, farmers, market women, journalists and the like — are again sidelined. This, the government, should consider if we are to truly reclaim the lost glory of our national honours awards.

- Kupoluyi writes from the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, vide, adewalekupoluyi@yahoo.co.uk, Twitter, @AdewaleKupoluyi