Should musicians desire or despise Nigeria’s biggest award show?

The Headies Awards is yet to have a date announced for this year’s shebang, but we already have enough drama to write a mini-series. The drama which involves voicing opposition to the awards have come from different quarters, but none is more louder than Tekno, who reacted in the famous words: "‘Next rated after how many years! Let’s be honest pls".

He said that because he believes that he is worth more than that category which state that “This category is a voting category for the most promising upcoming act in the year under review.” He is nominated alongside, Ycee, Mr Eazi, Humblesmith and Aramide.

The star was nominated for the Next Rated category, but his hit singles ‘Duro’ and ‘Pana’ failed to make the list, due to no one’s fault. Why was ‘Duro’ and ‘Pana’, the hottest singles of the singer missing from the list? Why didn’t these songs which has rocked Nigeria from every corner sit tall on the list?

The answer is no one’s fault. This isn’t a conspiracy to shut out the boy wonder from the awards, neither was politics a huge part of it. Tekno submitted his singles as entries for the awards. But in a classic case of coincidence, bad luck or poor karma, his release dates for the singles worked against him.

The year in review for the Headies 2016 states that every project released in the time frame of July 2015 – June 2016 will be considered. Tekno’s hit songs did not fall in the dates. ‘Duro’ was released in June 2015, essentially disqualifying it from consideration, and our current pop drug, ‘Pana’ was let fly in July 2016. That means his singles were released a month before and a month after consideration.

Tekno is not the first to experience a fundamental unease regarding what his role as a top artiste should be when it comes to an awards ceremony – or what role awards should play in his career, and how they should play it.

Just like him, there are a number of musicians who have very little regard for awards and all of their likes. They openly abuse their award plaques use them as door-wedges or the metal trophies as carpentry tools at home. They do this because they think it makes them look cool, but it’s all for the show. Ultimately, like album reviews, awards and nominations tend to be dismissed by artists as irrelevant when they don't pan out quite as hoped, but they embrace it and scream across platforms as soon as they turn out well.

Consider briefly, if Tekno was nominated as the Artiste of The Year, then this would be a different conversation. The same artiste who was ecstatic about winning the MTV Africa Music Awards Best Breakthrough Act, is rubbishing the Headies for nominating him in a similar category. Increasingly, though, it's not just artists who feel perplexed about what to make of award ceremonies.

It was unarguably powerful to see Wizkid picking up three MAMAs for his role in pushing African music into the global space. But awards that exist merely to publicise a magazine or radio station are a little more confusing, and the Headies are somewhere in the middle. It is being organised by HipTV afterall.

Some Headies are voted by an industry panel, others by fans. It's hard to know which is more (or less) valid: an award largely decided by music professionals block-voting for their own interests, or an award decided by sheer volume of fans.

For awards ceremonies, staying relevant is key. Every award have recently incorporated social media into the voting process, which might seem a bit trivial but this sort of flexibility is, perhaps, key to continued success. This is the digital era, where age-old organisations like the Billboard charts are constantly evolving and counting digital streams and Youtube views into deciding their charts. No institution is too big to ignore technology's onward march.

The Headies might have had some errors in their nominations list this year (just like previous years). These errors have been properly outlined. But the majority of people who attack the Headies operate from a place of sentiments, not fact. A paranoid Yung6ix, frustrated Solidstar and the Voltron Clarence Peters speak from a place of emotion and not facts and figures.

They despise the Headies for a perceived and contrived wrong, with absolutely no evidence to back their claims. But they do have the right to do that. They are in an industry where expression is art, and utilising it to speak against a system surely does generate a layer of admiration. I'd like to think that if I were not nominated, or respectfully treated by the Headies, I'd have told the organisers to stick that tokenistic award up their arse, demanding something meaningful or nothing at all.

But in the famous words of Tekno, “Let’s be honest, but would I? Ultimately, who wouldn't want an award? Everyone loves to be rewarded and liked, and there’s no greater feeling than being rewarded independently for the work you put in.

For Tekno, the Next Rated isn’t enough reward. And although he lashed out at the Headies afterwards, I suspect he would have accepted another category, then hang it proudly in his living room for guests to fawn over, while dancing on social media with it, and crediting it as the inspiration for his next big hit song.