The Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND) sponsored a new category at the 31st edition of Diamond Awards for Media Excellence (DAME): the PIND Prize for Niger Delta Reporting.
The award is part of PIND’s Media Solution Journalism Innovative Grants or PIND media grants, an initiative geared at promoting and rewarding solution and development reporting on issues within the Niger Delta. PIND is especially interested in journalistic reports highlighting proven development solutions that can help reduce regional poverty and conflict if replicated and scaled up.
PIND started this initiative in 2019 to share its successful development models, approaches, and lessons from working in the developmental sector in the Niger Delta region since 2010.
The winning report at this first edition of this particular category was “Let there be light,” written by Yekeen Akinwale and published on HumanAngle. It narrated how the residents of a remote coastal community in the Ilaje area of Ondo State, Southwest Nigeria, who once lived in darkness and out of the reach of the national electric grid, finally gained access to a stable power supply. The story also highlighted one of PIND’s Access to Energy (A2E) interventions through its partner, A4&T Power Solutions, a renewable energy company.
Akinwale was also a first runner-up in the same category. His story, “This NGO Is Toeing A New Path To Tackle Unemployment In The Niger Delta, And It’s Working,” focused on PIND’s Youth Employment Pathways (YEP) project.
The second runner-up, Innocent Duru of The Nation Newspaper, wrote, “Trouble In The Kingdom: Search for new Olu of Warri polarises Itsekiri.”
DAME announced the winners at an event on Sunday, December 11, 2022, at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Ikeja GRA, Lagos.
In a speech read at the event, PIND’s Executive Director, Tunji Idowu Idowu, represented by the Business Development Manager, James Ebube, said PIND sponsored the award to encourage journalists to go beyond routine media coverage that mainly highlights conflict situations in the Niger Delta and dig deeper for empowering stories that can transform people’s lives, especially marginalized populations.
“(PIND) believes that by highlighting these stories, the quality and quantity of media coverage on the Niger Delta will not only improve but will also promote understanding, practice, and behavior change and the adoption of PIND’s development models,” he said.
DAME is a non-profit organization that initiated the awards to stimulate and celebrate excellence, talent, and enterprise within the press.
PIND media grants reward media stories that highlight innovations promoting pro-poor development, advocacy, and awareness of significant issues limiting economic development and peacebuilding in the region.
