It is my hope that publishing two posts and disseminating them the same day would not be felt as pushing too much information to my audience. I was greeted before the doors of the fully air-conditioned and curtained Lecture Hall B2 by the CEO of RADComm LLC; welcomed by the beautiful face of The Face of GIJ, Khadija Leticia Aikins, and Goodman [Kofi Atiemo] who later gave a wonderful presentation on the 2018 edition of the GIJ Eminence Awards.
It’s was quite surprising to me that with the usual ‘Ghanaman’ time that most Ghanaians live by including my beloved Gijians it were the guest who were late and in some cases not present in person. Though we the ones who were honored to be invited to attend the event were late, the guest were later than we were.
The Master of Ceremonies, Thelma Abena Nyansah an opposite of me judiciously delivered her job though at some points she admitted that Goodman tried to overtake her duties. The evergreen Erica of Radio GIJ offered a short prayer of which I kind of struggled to close my eyes to because I had to photograph my thoughts at the time but equally chorused an “Amen” with the rest as if I did allow my eyeballs to kiss my eyes when it was required of me to do so.
Goodman the Executive Coordinator for RADComm Campus which is organizing this year’s event gave a short presentation on how the event has been planned and what students and even now, non-GIJ students should expect.
The purpose of the awards is to recognize, inspire or encourage and honor. The sponsors are GIJ SRC and NANOTECH which were represented by two gentlemen dressed for the occasion in some sleek executive clothes which made them you know… make me give them the OMG look. The theme is Inspiring Greatness, Celebrating Excellence. Nominations started immediately after the launch of the event today which is September 13. The paid voting starts from 1st October to 4th November 2018 at the cost of 30 pesewas per vote. The main event and the after party will be on the same day, 9th November, 2018. Nominees are expected to present their document as panels would not just look at votes but documents too. For the award process, nomination forms are online. There would be a review by the organization with each category not having more than four nominees.
Honorary Awards would be available for non-GIJ students but in the line of communication. The panel for the final selection of the nominations will be in two levels with the first including Agyenim Boateng, Desmond Lamptey, Tyrphena Yeboah and Mammavi Goh. The second level will consist of Yaw Gyan, Benard Avle, Paulina Kuranchie and Mr. Apaw. The criteria for every category will be made known publicly and will have 22 categories in all unlike what happened last year with 40 nominations. The categories are inclusive of other stuff so though it might look like what you fit into is not specifically available, when you look at it at a broader sense there will definitely be a category for every student who deems excellent.
The categories of nominations will be in two categories. The first being the Expect Choice includes the radio presenter of the year, radio show of the year, radio reporter of the year, sports journalists of the year, TV presenter of the year and the good news is that even if you work in those categories but work outside campus media networks like the guy in my class who works for Cbaze TV are all eligible. There are slots for blogger, author, PR personality, personality and event of the year. Under the Popular Choice Categories, we have media network, outstanding student in music and photography, poet of the year, fresher’s choice awards, hall of the year, outstanding SRC members, campus organizer of the year and a lot more till it marks twenty two.
The event is going to take place at Accra Digital Center which is not far away from Circle, Accra. There have been a lot of changes in this year’s edition but it’s all for the better turn out of events with much emphasis on credibility. There were a few issues bout the credibility of the awards last year where Nana Adu, the chief whip of GIJ General Assembly at the time questioned the credibility of the Eminence Awards but like what Kwasi Nimo Jnr said in his write up “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence. Vince Lombardi”…A flawed diamond is worth more than a perfect pebble.”
Richmond Anim Damoah introduced himself as being from NANOTECH which was quite surprising to me because we the audience were all expecting him to use RADComm LLC.
The chief executive technologist of NANOTECH, Oyetunji Abioye explained all the technicalities involved in the process of voting and nomination. He spoke some amazing Nigerian accent I started reminiscing my days back in high school. So it turns out it wasn’t just his looks but his voice. The other guy just sat behind the computer moderating the presentation and smiling.
The voting will be paid for via mobile money upon approval from your mo-mo account. Voting progress is made visible and live for viewers of the website at www.gijeminenceawards.com the nomination filing has been intentionally made in a way to prevent people from nominating the ones they want to nominate. To better your chances of being accepted for nominations, I Aba Radical will personally suggest to you that you let your followers and well-wishers know that you are in the best position to file the nominations due to the kind of information and testimonial that has to portray you as the best. I mean, who knows you than yourself, please don’t matter boyfriend under your breath while reading this post.
The website which I saw for myself is well designed, categorized and simple to follow. A high quality picture should be uploaded as a part of the nomination process because they won’t call you to tell you to send them a picture through any WhatsApp number. One can be nominated only once for a or each category showing why only the aspiring nominee should do the nomination by him/herself hence links on WhatsApp begging for higher nominations to guarantee you the final selection won’t be necessary. It is your profile and how true plus convincing it will be above other contesting aspirants that will guarantee you the slot.
You have to do a quarter of a page essay about what makes you stand out for a category. Naa Adoley Moffat who represented the absent SRC president, Kumah, encouraged everyone to support the awards in any way that they can, nominees should seek rightful means of winning and demanded an applauds when she ended her speech which was full of adorable contagious smiles.
For the first choice category, votes were initially going to be a 70-30 percent against the panel decision but were later changed to 50-50 percent decision because they believe that the award should go to the most deserving and not the most voted for. For the popular categories the voting are going to be 80 votes and 20 social media likes, comments and shares in percentage.
The good news is this year the organizers won’t be doing citations but a plaque and winners should be assured of goodies in addition. Erica elegantly and magestically revealed the plaque and they thanked us for honoring the launch. Great things take time to achieve. So let us all come on board and build the GIJ Eminence Awards into the glorious scheme it can become.
NB:
kiss me slow is still the most talked about poem. Kindky check it out( https://abaradical.wordpress.com/2018/07/02/kiss-me-slowly/)
Aba Radical
The Photographer of Thoughts
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Photography Of Thoughts 