awakeFromNib: is called only if the view controller is inside the nib file.
In this case you init the view controller with init initWithNibName:bundle, so the content of the view controller is inside the nib, not the view controller itself.
If you open the xib file, drag an object inside the xib and set the class to be your view controller class name, then awakeFromNib will be called (this case you don't need to initialize manually the view controller).
So keep in mind the difference between having a view controller in a xib file, and having a view controller not in a xib file, but with all it's contents loaded from a xib file.
PS: I used nib and xib interchangeably.
EDIT
I forgot to tell you how to go around this.Override viewDidLoad to do things with the initialized outlets.