Vanguard, BusinessDay Reporters Win Citi Journalistic Award

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)- Rosemary Onuoha of Vanguard and Ejiroghene Lucky Obodo of BusinessDay have been named winners of the 2013 Citi Journalistic Excellence Awards competition in Nigeria.

This is contained in a Statement from Ogochukwu Sylvia Ekezie Vice President Public Affairs Officer - Nigeria & Ghana Citibank Nigeria Limited  and made available to InvestAdvocate in Lagos Nigeria.

According to the statement, Onuoha was selected as a winner for her article titled “How Safe Is Armed Forces Pension Under Military Pension Board?” which was published in Vanguard on March 26, 2012 and Obodo was also selected as a winner for his article entitled “Where Banks Fear To Tread” which was published in BusinessDay on November 26th, 2012.

The Statement affirmed that for the 2013 competition, Citi Nigeria received sixteen (16) entries from business reporters across various media outlets, including: BusinessDay, Champion, Daily Sun, InvestAdvocate, National Mirror, Nigerian Compass, Nigerian News Direct, Punch, ThisDay and Vanguard.

Ekezie, Vice President Public Affairs Officer - Nigeria & Ghana Citibank Nigeria said four (4) finalists were selected by a distinguished panel of judges which included Ndidi Nwuneli, Founder of LEAP Africa and Forbes Magazine’s 20 Youngest Power Women in Africa in 2011; Rob Folley, Economic Officer of US Consulate General, Lagos and veteran media personality, Soni Irabor, Managing Director of SDI/Ruyi Communications.

“The Citi Journalistic Excellence Awards sends winning journalists to an elite seminar at Columbia University in New York. The International Journalists Seminar is a special program sponsored by Citi and administered by Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. For more than thirty years, the program has served to improve the quality of business journalism in the developing world by exposing leading local journalists to the issues and people that drive the global economy” the statement affirmed.

According to Ekezie, this year selected journalists from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroun, Columbia, Ecuador, France, Greece, Hong Kong, Kenya, Korea, Netherlands, Nigeria, Peru, Russia, South Africa, Spain, and Tunisia will get to meet with leaders of the business community, government, media and academia in New York. In previous years, former NY Federal Reserve President; William McDonough, former NY Federal President; Timothy Geithner and Ambassador Felix Rohatyn have spoken to the group, as have Columbia professors; R. Glenn Hubbard, Jagdish Bhagwati, Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs.

Also, winners of the Citi Journalistic Excellence Awards are expected to play significant roles in shaping their countries’ perceptions of the international business environment. Meeting with the eminent and thought-provoking speakers on the agenda should enhance their ability to interpret the global economy for their readers and viewers.