Winners have emerged in the 2014 Nigerian Academy of Science awards.
Folashade Adebayo, a senior correspondent with The Punch newspaper won the print category while Vivian Irikefe of TVC was named winner of the prize in the broadcast category.
Ms. Irikefe, said to be the only journalists to have won the award twice was declared winner based on a TV feature on Ebola. The winners were announced at a luncheon of the academy held at Protea hotel on 7th of May, 2015.
Mrs Adebayo winning entries was a two part series titled “A Walk through the Valley of Ebola” and “Ebola: Nigerian Health Workers Take Battle to the Lion’s Den”.
Also, Kunle Falayi of Saturday Punch emerged runner-up of The Print category with a two part story on “Lagos Residents at Risk of Contaminated Water” and “Cancer Causing Metal Detected in Water Supplied to Lagos Residents”.
Ms. Jennifer Igwe, an assistant manager, News and Current Affairs with NTA was named runner-up in the print category with a news feature on Ebola and the love of Nigerians for Bush meat.
Commenting on the uniqueness of her entry, the Executive Secretary of NAS, Dr. Oladoyin Odubanjo said the key thing about the story is that it was done about four months before the outbreak of Ebola in Nigeria. The winners of the various categories got tablets, plaques and cash prizes.
Harping on the importance of the awards which is in its fifth year, Dr. Odubanjo said the idea is to popularize science and also appreciate the quality of science journalism in the country. He added that the sponsorship of this year’s edition of the awards was solely shouldered by the academy but he extended an invitation to organisations that could collaborate with the academy to sponsor future editions of the awards.
Mr. Akinlabi Jimoh, the former Anglophone Coordinator, World Federation of Science Journalists gave a keynote address at the luncheon on “The role of media in the advancement of Science in a political Era”.
He said science must be integrated with societal needs and also clamoured for journalism schools to institute core science courses in a bid to make journalism a full-fledged practice.
“To complete behavioural change, people need to see themselves in the information that we provide”, he stated.
