1st November, 2023
A new award, the Africa Institutions Award (AIA) has been unveiled to celebrate and promote personalities helping to build and defend institutions in Nigeria and Africa.
Lai Omotola, founder and promoter of Africa Institutions Award told newsmen on Tuesday in Maryland, Lagos that the new award is the first of its kind aimed at promoting established institutions in Nigeria and in Africa.
“The essence of this Africa Institutions Award is to promote our institutions, people who have helped in building our institutions, because we believe that we should be building institutions and not building strong men.
“We believe that if our institutions can stand, our democracy will stand. But the inability of our institutions to stand properly is the recipe for disaster.
“What are the institutions we are talking about, we are talking about the judiciary, the police, the education system, journalism, EFCC, National Assembly, police and others. these are institutions that should stand and we see that day by day, standards are being eroded to our faces you will realise that even in America, the institutions were tested on January 6, 2021, and they did not take it lightly and that is what they are fighting their former president for, for trying to rubbish that institution,” Omotola explained.
Omotola said the award is coming at a date to be announced soon in December in Abuja where distinguished personalities who have helped in one way or the other to ensure the nation’s cherished institutions were not eroded, would be awarded.
According to him, “Our National Assembly, as an institution, how are they performing? I believe that for anybody God has helped to enter the National Assembly, the mode of transportation should be his least concern, he should be able on his own without anybody aiding him provide the means of transportation.
“These are institutional things, so we want to dedicate sometime in December, we are now saying people should come up with names of people that they believe have helped our institutions such as the police, judiciary, education, our electoral body system and so on.
“The names of people that believe in institutions and uphold all the ethics of the institutions. This is the way we want to promote our institutions and this goes across Africa too. If our institutions are standing such that nobody can rise above them, Nigeria will be a sane country but when our institutions are totally compromised and in a situation where everybody is doubting our institution, there is a problem,” he said.
Omotola stated that people are losing hope in the judiciary and that the only person who could turn the judiciary around is the head of the Supreme Court, because “whatever you say, the buck stops at their table. The Supreme Court must be able to sit firm and not be shaken by anybody. The people heading the judiciary must be sacrosanct with the law.”
He added: “Our policing needs serious reform, if the police do not stand in Nigeria, we are in serious trouble. It is the police that upholds the law, stakeholders within the police environment know it has deteriorated to a huge extent and unless there is a concerted effort to build back our institutions, people will begin to ask, to what extent is this democracy?”
“So this award is to identify persons that are institution savvy, that have done everything to ensure that the institutions are protected no matter the attack, these persons are persons we want to recognise. These are the people we want to give this award to,” Omotola stated.