What The Headies Needs to Do to Hit Its Stride

Complaining about The Headies has become something of an annual ritual for Nigerian music enthusiasts. Every year we anticipate the awards show with bated breath, holding out a sliver of hope that this year’s edition would meet the minimum threshold of normalcy, only to be utterly disappointed, every single time. This year’s installment of the award show came complete with the usual spate of problems. The organization was wonky as usual. The concept of timeliness was entirely treated as an afterthought. It almost seemed like the organizers regarded the time limits imposed on each section as being a pointless subtext. The production was characteristically abysmal. The sound system, at times, felt comparable to a cheap public address system. The video broadcast could as well have been from the 80s. But these problems, however appalling, pale in comparison to the biggest ignominies of the night. 

At some point, the show ran out of plaques to award the winners. Pause for a moment, take a long, deep breath, and consider the ridiculousness of it all. How does an award show run out of plaques to award winners they selected? It’s not as if the number of categories was expanded on the night of the event. In all my years of following award shows, I’ve never witnessed anything remotely close to this. But that’s not even the biggest infraction of this year’s event. As of when the show closed for the night, minutes past 3am, the winners of several major categories had yet to be announced. As of Monday afternoon, several categories were still being announced on social media. For all the lapses of previous editions, this year marked a new low for the award. 

Awards shows all over the world routinely stir hotly-debated conversations and sometimes controversy. But it’s usually on account of their subjective nature. How does one objectively decide the best album, the best film or the best song in a calendar year? As a result, some people will always take issue with the choices of the organizers/voting board. But it’s part of the fun of award shows. Critics spend time dissecting the winners and losers. Fans in turn entertain themselves with arguments and opinions about controversial decisions and high points of the show. The Headies in contrast leaves little room for such entertaining conversations as the post-award-night focus is usually on the many problems of the show.

In 2022, The Headies sent seismic waves rippling through the media landscape when they announced that the award show would be moving to the U.S. A vast swath of people were aggrieved by the decision, but most felt disoriented, confused, left in the lurch by this seemingly incongruous and unilateral decision. How could they not feel concerned? The change meant that the average music enthusiast who would have otherwise been able to attend the show, could no longer attend. The optics of a Nigerian award show relocating to the U.S. also seemed ominous. 

A few days later, Mr. Ayo Animashaun, the CEO of Smooth Promotions, which produces The Headies,  joined a Twitter Space I co-hosted, under the aegis of  THE NATIVE Magazine. He calmly explained the rationale behind the move and tried to assuage all parties. The move, in his telling, would afford the show benefits such as access to the richer American media landscape, better production quality, and possible partnerships with global brands. Given his calm demeanor and his plausible explanations, we acquiesced and hoped for the best. The American experiment, however, turned out to be a disaster. The same problems persisted for two straight years and the show eventually had to return to Nigeria for this edition. 

This brings up the question: what exactly is the solution to The Headies’ myriad problems? The answer is surprisingly simple: the award show is long overdue for a culture shift. The show's seemingly endless decline implies that a significant chunk of its staff is dropping the ball. There’s nothing inherently wrong with making mistakes. To be human is to be fallible. But when said mistakes continue yearly—with increasing intensity even—that’s a clear indicator that something is fundamentally broken. Consider the major lapses of this year's show—running out of plaques and closing the show without announcing the winners of several major categories. These could have been easily avoidable if the staff had done their due diligence. An organization is only as good as its people and culture. If The Headies is serious about getting it right in time for the 18th edition of the award, due later this year, then they need to embark on a company-wide restructuring effort.

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