On Monday, Comrade Phillip Shuiabu, Edo State Deputy Governor instituted three annual awards for all practicing journalists in the State.
According to this decision, the awards, Best Investigative Journalist of the year, Best Reporter of the year and Best Journalist of the year, all have a prize of N500,000 and a trophy attached to them.
He said:
“I am instituting these awards because of the good jobs the journalists do in our society. As Deputy Governor today, it is the media who insisted some us were still being detained when the military junta put us in prison. If not for the journalists who insisted, we would have been forgotten,”
He explained that the annual hosting of journalists, for him, is “about sharing and for you to recognise your role,” adding that democracy without the media is no democracy.
“The media is the catalyst, the media mirrors the society, journalists need to balance their reports,”Shaibu added, urging the media to see government as partners in progress.
Earlier, the newly elected Chairman of the Edo State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Mr. Festus Aalenkhe, called on the Edo State government to partner with journalists by investing in the State Council, just as he solicited the government to power the Secretariat of the NUJ from its Oshiomo Power Station.
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