Multiple media award winner, Toyosi Ogunseye and Kingsley Ezeani have emerged winners of the Journalism and New Media prizes of the ‘The Future Awards Africa’ 2013.
Ogunseye, Editor, Sunday Punch won the Journalism prize while Ezeani, Publisher of ‘Information Nigeria’ website bagged the New Media award.
They were named winners at the award ceremony on Friday night in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Journalism and New Media prizes are two of the 15 categories of The Future Awards Africa, described by the World Bank as ‘The Nobel Prize for young Africans’,
The award recognise and reward the success and achievements of young people aged
between 18 and 31 living in Africa.
According to the organisers, the Journalism prize ” is given to a writer, reporter, presenter, producer, and other professionals working in the journalism who has demonstrated excellence in the work of telling of stories and bringing the news to the public.”
“ The New Media award is given to a young person who is reaching new frontiers as an innovator, publisher, business owner, entrepreneur, or professional in new media.
Ogunseye’s winning report, ‘The rich also cry: A tale of deaths and diseases in a heavily polluted upscale estate’, focused on the concerns of the residents of a heavily polluted upper-middle class estate in Lagos.
The second part: ‘The rich also cry: Killer metals in the blood ‘detailed the results of
blood and urine tests conducted on the residents, which confirmed the presence of
killer doses of metals in their bodies.
This report, which was the winning entry, saved lives as well as also championed a policy change as the factory that was polluting the environment, was shut down.
At age 18, Kingsley Ezeani founded ‘Information Nigeria’ a news portal which has become one of the most popular websites in Nigeria with 12 full-time staff, over 100 volunteers and over 500,000 Facebook fans.
‘Information Nigeria’ is one of the 20 most visited Nigerian websites with over 10 Million monthly visitors.
Ezeani’s passion for development according to the led to the founding of ‘Crowd sourced Education’ a project which earned him the 2011 I.T.U fellowship. He was also a finalist in the I.T.U Young Innovators Contest in Geneva, Switzerland and one of Nigeria’s delegates to the World Business Dialogue, the largest students Conference in the world.
