NB celebrates media excellence at Golden Pen Award

Nigerian Breweries Plc recently celebrated outstanding journalism practice at the ninth edition of its Golden Pen Awards, which took place in Lagos. The awards aim at promoting professionalism and objective reportage and rewarding deserving journalists, who abide by the ethics of journalism profession in their practice.

The night saw Isioma Madike of New Telegraph newspaper emerging NB Golden Pen Reporter of the Year. The first runner-up was Arukaino Umukoro of Punch newspapers, while Caleb Ojewale of BusinessDay clinched the second runner-up position.

The Photo Journalist of the Year award went to Olatunji Obasa of Punch newspapers. Suleiman Hussaini also of New Telegraph emerged as first runner-up, while Toluwani Eniola of Punch newspapers was the second runner-up.

Mojeed Alabi, a reporter with New Telegraph won NB Report of the Year.

All the winning journalists got cash prizes and special NB Golden Pen Awards statuette as part of the reward package. The top three winners also got high-end work tools as part of their prizes.

While welcoming guests at the event, Managing Director, Nigerian Breweries Plc, Mr. Johan Doyer, noted that the choice of theme for the award ‘Agriculture, Local Sourcing and Industrial Development’ was directed at aligning with Nigeria’s current push for economic recovery and growth. This, he said, was hinged on the expectation that the media, in its agenda-setting role, will exploit the Nigerian Breweries Golden Pen Awards to draw attention of stakeholders to the key sectors required to drive economic revival.

“To us, these three areas – agriculture, local sourcing and industrial development are jointly critical in Nigeria’s quest to achieve her full potential and become a self-reliant nation,” he said.

Doyer also acknowledged the role of the media in the successes recorded over the last nine years with the awards and thanked the panel of judges, that rigorously analysed the entries for originality, credibility and factuality.

Guest speaker, Mr. Ray Ekpu, thanked Nigerian Breweries for the initiative and called for soul-searching by the media, which he urged to bridge the gap between training and practice.