THEWILL Publisher Bags Journalism Excellence Award; Akpabio, Others
SAN FRANCISCO, September 16, (THEWILL) – For his “passion and commitment to bringing about a revolution in the Nigerian media,” Publisher of THEWILL, Prince Austyn Ogannah was one of five distinguished personalities honoured in Ibadan for excelling in their various fields.
Prince Ogannah bagged the award for excellence in Journalism at a ceremony orgnaised by the prestigious Union of Campus Journalists (UCJ), University of Ibadan (UI) — the umbrella body of several hundred departmental, faculty, religious, residential and independent press organisations in the institution.
The event, the culmination of a series of activities to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of UCJ, also featured the presentation of awards to four others: Professor Philip Oyelaran (Education), Professor Festus Adesanoye (Communication Arts), Barrister Bamidele Aturu (Law) and Obong Godswill Akpabio (Politics).
Although Ogannah was held back in his San Francisco, California base, he nevertheless accepted the award by proxy, thanking the organisation for the honour and assuring of his support for any sincere effort to up the standard of media practice in the country by raising a generation of passionate and intellectually capacitated campus journalists.
He was praised as an advocate for good governance who founded THEWILL, a rapidly rising online news medium with a reach belies its less-than-three-year founding.
“THEWILL … first published online on 31st October 2009 … is a media organisation that has carved a niche for itself in investigative journalism,” said Miss Toyin Adeyemi, the vice president of UCJ who also chaired the selection panel and organising committee of the award.
“Unlike other conventional newspapers where the newsroom is physical, THEWILL has established itself as the only newspaper with a real online newsroom. This has made possible the timely reporting of news to its target audience.”
While Akpabio was honoured for series of developmental projects in Akwa Ibom State highlighted by the emergence of infrastructures in the state, Professor Adesanoye, a retired Communication and Language Arts don, was awarded the education category for his decades of contribution to his profession, which have earned him global acclaim.
Professor Oyelaran, an alumnus of the university who was honoured for his academic excellence, is most remembered as Nigeria’s first Ph.D. holder in Environmental Archaeology, while Aturu got his place on the list through his populist stance in his many legal and public commentary engagements.
All five awards were handed out to the quintet by Professor Francis Egbokhare, the revered former director of the institution’s Distance Learning Centre and a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters who, only some years back, was the youngest to attain professorial rank in the university.