By Mohammed Dahiru
Two reports on the DAILY NIGERIAN Grassroots Investigative Reporting Project, GIRP, have won the Alfred Opubor Next Gen Campus Reporters Award undertaken by its reporting fellows Rabiu Musa and Abdulwaheed Sofiullah respectively.
The award which was held in Abuja to recognise outstanding student journalists in Nigerian tertiary institutions was organised by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development, CJID.
Mr Musa, an investigative reporting fellow with the DAILY NIGERIAN’s GIRP emerged the first runner-up in the Budgetary Tracking and Procurement Category for his September 2022 story titled “Tales of anguish, death, trail abandoned Garko-Kibiya road in Kano.”
Similarly, Mr Sofiullah also a fellow of the GIRP won the first runner-up in the health reporting category for his July 2022 story titled “Inside Kano community where children drop out of school due to lack of potable water.”
“I feel so glad to be part of the DAILY NIGERIAN reporting project which has given me to the opportunity to not only beam the light on basic problems affecting the rural communities but also earned me a recognition and award,” Mr Sofiullah told DAILY NIGERIAN in a reaction.
The DAILY NIGERIAN Grassroots Investigative Reporting Project which is a part of the Wole Soyinka Center for Investigative Journalism, WSCIJ Collaborative Media Project funded by MacArthur Foundation is an initiative targeted at equipping grassroots reporters with skills and resources to cast a spotlight on activities at the sub-national level.
“This is in order to enable system strengthening in the country by holding both public and private sectors to account at the grassroots,” Mohammed Dahiru, the Project Manager had said in a statement earlier in the year.
The 2022 Alfred Opubor Next-Gen Campus Reporter Awards has nine categories including the Best Budgetary Tracking/Procurement Story, Best Environment/Climate Change Report, Best Fact-Check, Best Campus Investigative Reporter of the Year, Best Conflict Story, Best Election Observation Report, Best Gender Story, Best Health Reporting, and Best Sports Writer of the Year.
Alongside the award plaques presented to the winners, CJID also announced a N100,000 cash prize for winners, N60,000 for first runners-up and N40,000 for second runners-up.
This is the second edition of the awards named after Alfred Opubor, Nigeria’s first professor of Mass Communication.
The maiden edition of the awards was held in 2018 with seven categories.
