Prize-giving day in a Big Brother nation: where does our society spend its applause?

On Saturday, 8 August 2026, Oranyan Grammar School, Oyo, my alma mater, held this year’s valedictory and prize giving service. I have been involved in this event for several years now, and this year’s ceremony offered another occasion to reflect on something larger than one school, one old student, or one set of awards. It invites us to think about what we choose to honour as a society, and what children learn from the things we put on stage.

Prize giving day has always mattered to me. As a secondary school pupil at Oranyan Grammar School, it was one of the great highlights of the school year, aligning closely with our school motto Palmam qui meruit ferat (“prize goes to those who deserve it”). The prizes themselves were usually modest. In many cases, they were books. Not fat cheques. Not gadgets. Not flashy gifts. Just books, certificates, and the proud walk from one’s seat to the front of the hall.

Yet the memory has remained with me for more than three decades.

What made the occasion powerful was not the market value of the prize. It was the paraphernalia of civic attention around it. Parents came. Old students came. Teachers were there in their full authority. Fellow students watched. The school hall became a stage on which society performed its values before the eyes of school children. Academic excellence was called by name. Achievement was made visible. For young students, that mattered a lot. It told us that someone was watching. It told us that learning counted. It told us that society, or at least the small society gathered in that hall, still knew how to honour scholarship.

Looking back, however, one can also see the limits of that older culture of recognition. Prize giving day, as powerful as it was, tended to reserve its loudest applause for outright academic excellence. The child who came first was seen. The child who moved quietly from weakness to strength was less likely to be noticed, unless that improvement also placed them at the very top. The student of exemplary conduct, the natural helper, the quiet servant of the school community, the one whose character made the classroom better, did not always receive the same public honour. That is not a condemnation of the past. It is an invitation to enlarge its best instincts.

Academic excellence must remain central, as it should. A country that desperately needs doctors, engineers, teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, technicians, public servants and problem solvers cannot afford to be shy about honouring those who excel in school. In an age of “who book epp?” and “school is scam”, there is significant civic value in publicly affirming that learning matters. We must not surrender the moral space of education to cynicism, shortcuts and empty cleverness.

But recognition must not stop there. If the only children we celebrate are those who come first, we risk teaching a narrow lesson about achievement. We may unintentionally tell other children that their growth is invisible, their effort does not count, and their contribution has no public language. Yet schools are full of children whose stories deserve honour. There is the student who struggled at the beginning of the year but improved through discipline and persistence. There is the child who may not top the class but whose conduct brings calm and dignity into the classroom. There is the student who helps others, volunteers quietly, takes initiative, and makes the school community better.

A society that wants to build people must learn to notice such things.

So this year, I challenged the school leadership and keystakeholders in my alma mater to reflect on other ways we can recognise achievements that are important but often less visible. I am, in this column, extending that challenge to the larger society.

So, one of this year’s new categories is the award for the student with the most improved academic performance. Society often celebrates position, but we do not always celebrate movement. We clap for the child who finished first, as we should. But what about the child who moved from failure to competence, from fear to confidence, from indifference to effort? There is a kind of moral beauty in progress. It may not always produce the highest score, but it reveals resilience, teachability and the capacity for growth. In a country where many children begin from unequal starting points, recognising improvement is not sentimentality. It is justice. It is also motivation.

Also this year, there is a new award for exemplary conduct. This is important because education is not only about passing exams. It is about forming persons. It is about judgment, restraint, honesty, respect, responsibility and discipline. A brilliant child without character is an unfinished project. A school that produces cleverness without conscience has not completed its work. Nigeria already has enough talented people who know how to manipulate systems without serving society. We need competence, yes, but we also need character.

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There is also a new award for service and citizenship. Every school has children who make life easier for others. They help classmates. They support teachers. They volunteer for tasks. They show kindness when no one is looking. They take responsibility for the shared space. Often, these children are treated as merely “good” or “well behaved”, but not necessarily as achievers. Yet a society is held together by such people. The child who learns early to serve a community is more likely to become the adult who understands that leadership is not entitlement but responsibility.

Even within the academic categories, we can be more intentional about the values we honour. This year, at Oranyan Grams, there is a new award for the pupils with the highest combined performance in Yoruba and English Language. A child who excels in both an indigenous language and English carries a double inheritance. English opens doors to global conversation, international commerce and diplomacy. Yorùbá, Igbo, Hausa and other indigenous languages root children in memory, culture, identity and worldview. We must not raise children who are fluent in the world but strangers to themselves. The future needs global competence, but it also needs cultural rootedness.

All of this brings us to the larger question of attention capital. Attention capital is one of the most powerful resources any society possesses. Money matters. Buildings matter. Policy matters. But attention also matters, in a special way. What we publicly recognise becomes socially desirable. What we honour becomes aspirational. What we repeatedly celebrate becomes a ladder in the moral imagination of the young.

In every generation, young people look around to see what adults clap for. They notice who gets the stage, who gets the microphone, who gets the applause, who gets the photograph, and who gets the language of honour. They may not always obey our lectures, but they study our celebrations. They learn from the people we promote, the lifestyles we excuse, the noise we reward, and the quiet virtues we ignore.

Nigeria is going through a dangerous season in which public attention is too often captured by vanity, noise and inanity. We live in an age of empty celebrity worship, instant fame, performative wealth, and the seductive logic of shortcuts. A child does not need to look far to see the social curriculum being taught outside the classroom. It is there in the cautionary story of Hushpuppi, whose curated Instagram life of private jets, luxury cars and designer excess drew millions of followers before he was jailed in the United States for money laundering. It is there in the glorification of sudden money. It is there in the casual contempt for intellectual application. It is there in the politics of convoy, entitlement and patronage. It is there in the entertainment of spectacle without substance.

Big Brother Naija is only a useful shorthand here. The real problem is not one television show. It is the wider attention economy that teaches young people to mistake visibility for value, spectacle for substance, and public fascination for genuine achievement. No society can continue like that without consequences. If we keep feeding the imagination of the young with spectacle, we should not be surprised when seriousness begins to look boring.

That is why the old prize giving day, properly reimagined, still has something to teach us. It reminds us that recognition can be organised. Applause can be directed. Honour can be curated. Communities can decide, deliberately, that certain values deserve public celebration. We do not have to leave the moral formation of children to algorithms, reality television, political thuggery, influencer culture or the market of empty fame.

Old students should return to their alma mater, not only for nostalgia, but for renewal. Attend prize giving days. Sponsor books. Give awards. Honour teachers. Celebrate hardworking students. Recognise the child who improved from 40 to 65 per cent, even if he does not land among the top ten academic performers. Recognise the one who keeps the classroom clean. Recognise the one who helps others. Recognise the one who leads quietly. Recognition does not have to be grand to be meaningful. Sometimes, one certificate, one handshake, one photograph, one public mention can plant a seed that grows for a lifetime.

Beyond schools, we can practise the same habit in our neighbourhoods, churches, mosques, family meetings and community associations. Ask children what they are reading. Celebrate good results. Praise improvement. Honour discipline. Notice service. Make character visible. Let the young see that society still has eyes for things that matter.

Prize giving day may look old fashioned to some. I do not think it is. Properly understood, it is one of the most beautiful rituals of civic formation. It tells children what a community values. It reminds adults of their responsibility. It gathers memory, aspiration and public honour in one place.

In the words of my old school anthem, perhaps this is the charge we must pass round again:

Pass the motto round folks, pass the motto round

And this, ne’er forget

Palmam qui meruit ferat

Where a society spends its applause, there also it plants its future.