FIX IT PLEASE!!!! Apart From Being Boring, Here Are Four Other Things Wrong With Kenyan Award Ceremonies Today

Award ceremonies are billed as joyous occasions where we can celebrate the best talent in the business- whatever business it is. Nevertheless, a few good old-fashioned mishaps often over-shadow the glitz and glamour…

The Kilimanjaro Awards that happened this past weekend in Tanzania have been highly acclaimed. There were close to zero complaints. The only shock was when Ali Kiba won more awards than Diamond. That’s understandable since Kiba has been popular for close to ten years now yet Diamond has only been at the top for three years. It’s yet to be seen whether Diamond will embrace the longevity. The veteran always wins.

Back to Kenyan Awards; what’s really wrong?

The prize

Earlier this year, I was blessed to be one of the three finalists for the African Blogger Of The Year Award in the Social Media Africa Awards held in Lagos. It was organized by Nigerians. The winner of every award took home 1000 US dollars. That’s 95K in Kenyan currency. The losers didn’t go empty handed either. They were gifted with free social media training programs and lots of goodies. Pretty awesome right?.

In Kenyan Award Ceremonies, the only thing a winner takes home is prestige, accompanied by a trophy. If things are good enough, maybe a phone will be thrown in there. Which begs the question, why is it so hard for Kenyan Award organizers to give serious prizes yet there are sponsors? I bet you don’t know. Well, I don’t know either.

The method by which the winner is chosen

In The Social Media Africa Awards for example, the eventual winner for each category had to pass through several stages. First, the organizers called for the public to nominate people and institutions. Second, the judges sieved the hundreds of people and came up with a shortlist of worthy nominees who would then advance to the voting stage. The three individuals with most votes in each category would then advance as finalists to the decisive phase where judges picked the winner best on deep analysis of the work and contribution to society.

Kenyan awards rely on voting alone. Voting can be manipulated. Every award never passes without public outcry concerning who should have won and who shouldn’t. We saw that in the Groove Awards. We have seen that In many other awards

Same people winning

A few weeks ago, popular blogger Bikozulu won a BAKE award even though he had declared prior that he wasn’t interested in the awards anymore. That’s because he had won it so many times. For Christ’s sake, Biko even asked people to vote for other people in his category and not for him. He still won. He wasn’t impressed. In fact, he was so unimpressed that he went on a tirade against the sponsors of BAKE. Common sense dictates that even if Biko had the highest number of votes, awarding the person who came second could have been more appropriate.

There are other celebrities though who keep winning despite not deserving. The incessant need to give an award to every star even if all that they have done is just post Instagram photos and party is something we need to STOP doing. Keep the categories simple and maintain the sanctity of good ward ceremonies

Fashion sense

Speaking of what happens at the award ceremonies themselves, dress malfunctions are ten to the dozen these days (rips, tears, see through, nip slips, it’s all going on). Stars usually show up in overprized clothing without knowing whether they look good or not. The fashion disaster ship sailed a long time ago and no one tried to sink it.