The Future Awards Africa, also popularly known as The Future Awards, are a set of awards given by The Future Project (TFP), a social enterprise set up with a strong, practical commitment to human and capital development, especially in Africa.

It just concluded it’s 2016 episode of the The Future Awards and of course the aftermath of the programme has always been a mixture of emotions for participants and nominees. This year has clearly shown that such aftermath is always an eventuality and of course, this year’s version is already pouring in.

So much is being said about the event on Social Media and so much more is expected to be said. One of the early submissions is from a social media expert and commentator, J.J Omojuwa who took to one if his Social Media Platforms (Instagram) this morning to share some gems on awards, nominations and eventual winners.

We caught up with him on his IG Page and below is a transcript of what he shared which we found quite inspiring:

I want to address an issue that comes up every year about The Future Awards. I should do a blog post but this is how the Spirit has led me to do it. When you are nominated for ANY award, whether you win it or not is not the issue, that you have served humanity to the point of being recognized is the issue.

So, to those who were nominated and didn’t win, you won when you already got nominated. You were already called out out of many. Someone goes home with the plaque in each category but every nominee must learn to go back home with their heads held high because they are a generation’s honourables. To those who expected to be nominated but weren’t, don’t join those who make up conspiracy theories and stuff looking to throw up negative energy.

Not being nominated doesn’t mean you aren’t doing great work, it just means those running this particular award haven’t noticed you yet or they had a lot of people doing just as much great work. No system sees everyone, even the FG doesn’t know some of us exist. So, you don’t exist for the validation of awards and recognition, you exist for significance, to make your essence a telling difference in our world.

You don’t need an award to know you are doing great work. But if you think you really do need an award to feel good, apply to an award organization and tell them about your work. But really and truly, just focus on what you do, evolve and continue to do good. Rewards are natural, they always come. And to the winners, congratulations. Winning this award is great, it is like winning an age grade competition.

The award is not celebrating you because of what you have become, it is celebrating you for what you are becoming. Don’t get it twisted, you have only just started. Make sure we see you do even greater things in the future because the award you just won became history as soon as you received it. To all of us, let us celebrate one another.

Let us push one another. A simple “you are doing a great job” is the difference between someone giving up and the person gaining renewed strength to do better. Africa needs us and we can’t make change happen if we don’t see these things the right away. #TFAA2016 #ShapingTheFuture

It is not clear what inspired the write-up but we suspect that there might have been some grudges from some nominees who did not win or who do not agree with the choice of winner in their various categories.