Winners have emerged for the Alfred Opubor Campus Journalism Award organized by the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ).
The winners are Adekunle Adebanjo; Best Oponion Piece, Okafor Chiamaka; Best Community Journalism story and Best female campus reporter and Kabir Adejumo, Best investigative story, most prolific writer and best male campus reporter.
Premium Times reports that Adejumo Kabir, a 300 level student of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) who won three awards expressed his gratitude to PTCIJ for the honour at the event and for the opportunity to be trained under the campus reporters’ framework.
Adejumo said the award will encourage him to write without fear or favour for the promotion of the welfare of students and the community at large.
Adebajo of University of Ibadan won the best opinion piece with his entry ”Nigerian Tertiary Institutions: An Endangered Species Under the 2018 budget” while Okafor from the Nnamdi Azikwe University won the best community journalism story award for her story, “UNIZIK community laments 21- Day power outage.”
The awards were named in honour of the late Alfred Opubor for his pioneering contributions to journalism in Nigeria.
Opubor was the first Nigerian professor who served at the Department of Mass Communication at the University Of Lagos (UNILAG).
The Executive Director, Institute of Media and Society, Mr Akin Akingbulu and Managing Editor, Online, The Nation, Lekan Otufodunrin, received special recognition awards for their contributions to journalism in Nigeria.
Speaking at the award event, the Publisher of PREMIUM TIMES, Dapo Olorunyomi explained that PTCIJ was trying to renew the whole idea of storytelling and how stories are redistributed.
“We realise that there were clashes between the teachings in the classrooms and what is happening in the newsroom. There was lack of resources to the job and for you to be able to do journalism, you need resources,” he said.
“I particularly commend the Editor-In-Chief, Musikilu Mojeed, for his commitment to the job and his belief in revolutionalising journalism,” he said.