Winners have emerged in the maiden edition of the PwC Nigeria Media Excellence Awards to celebrate and reward excellence in business reporting in Nigeria.
The winners are :
*Eromo Egbejule of Ventures Africa, SME Reporting Categorywith his article titled: ‘Walk in these shoes: Aba’s very own leather manufacturing plant’
*FisayoSoyombo of The CableNG, Business & Economy Category with the article, ‘Undercover Investigation: Nigeria’s Customs of Corruption, Bribery and Forgery’.
*Anthony Matuluko of Tax Matters on TV, Tax category with interview of secondary school students at the Society for Women in Taxation (SWIT) seminar.
*Abiodun Eronmosele, Capital Market Category. Eromosele with his article titled: ‘Of The Exchange Rate and Devaluation.”
The winners got a cash prize of N500,000 each while the runners up that made the first three got N50,000 consolation award.
The runners up are:
*Hannah Ojo of the Nation Newspapers and Oluwamayowa Tijani of The CableNG, SME Reporting category.
*Emmanuel Ogunsola of Techpoint NG and Isaac Anyaogu of BusinessDay Newspaper, Business and Economy category.
*Stanley Opara of Punch Newspapers, Collins Nwaeze of The Nation Newspapers, Capital Market Category
*Oluwamayowa Tijani of the CableNG, Tax Reporting category.
Of the 55 entries received for the award, 29 were for Business & Economy Reporting; 16 for SME Reporting; eight for Capital Market Reporting and two for Tax Reporting.
TaiwoOyedele, the PwC’s Tax Partner and Head, Tax & Regulatory Services, PwC West Africa, decried the low reportage of tax issues by Nigerian journalists saying it largely accounts for the poor awareness about tax in the country.
“It is disturbing that only two entries were received in the Tax Reporting category. This goes to show the low awareness level of tax issues in Nigeria. If the journalists who are supposed to inform and stimulate discussions on tax issues in the country are not doing so, probably because of their lack of understanding of the issues, then, the awareness level on tax would be very low among the populace, ” Oyedele noted.
He pledged that his organisation was set to help improve Tax reporting by organising various capacity enhancement workshops for Nigeria business journalists.
The Deputy Vice President, Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN), Mrs Simplice Gladys Olajumoke, also pledged her organisation’s support to ensure that the issue of tax dominates the Nigerian media space.
In his opening remark, Deputy Senior Country Partner, PwC Nigeria, Mr. TolaOgundipe said journalists have important role to play in the society as information carriers.
According to him, good governance and economic independence can be achieved if the journalists ensure excellence reportage of issues that are well researched.
He urged the Nigerian journalists to always leverage on technology adding that the award was instituted to celebrate and reward excellence in business reporting.
The mission of PwC, a leading professional services firm is to build trust in society and solve important problems. It has a network of firms in 157 countries with more than 223,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services.