Ripples Nigeria shines at PwC Media Excellence Award 2017
Ripples Nigeria, foremost multimedia online news platform in Nigeria, received outstanding recognition at the Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) Media Excellence Award 2017 held Friday in Lagos, for its important contribution to enterprise and the economy through excellent, relevant and impactful reporting.
At the award which “celebrates and rewards excellence in business reporting in Nigeria”, Ripples Nigeria emerged first runner-up in the most-entered-for and tightly-contested category in 2017, ‘Business and Economy’.
The extensive, multi-layer investigative story, ‘INVESTIGATION… Asian company rakes in billions, pollutes Lagos, Ogun in illegal manufacture of black oil’, which was published on June 5, 2017 and written by Ripples Nigeria correspondent, Akinkunmi Obakeye, received the recognition.
The report uncovered activities of some foreign-owned businesses which are ostensibly doing legitimate business in Nigeria but are actually involved in illegal activities, exploiting government failure, lax regulation, and the greed of corrupt officials.
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Following a painstaking and diligent investigation which involved a sustained trail of the entire illicit business chain, stage after stage, Ripples Nigeria was able to expose, using its wealth of experience in data aggregation, detailed analysis and content presentation, threats to the environment through pollution, and economic sabotage through resource theft, evasion of tax and profiteering off the black market.
In the Business and Economy category of the award which had a total of 45 entries, emerging the category with the highest entries overall, Techpoint’s Victor Ekwealor’s article, ‘Can technology help dried fish nourish the Nigerian economy?’, claimed first prize, while BusinessDay’s Isaac Anyaogu’s article, ‘Apapa roads – a crying shame’, came third.
Taiwo Oyedele, PwC’s head partner, Tax, in his remarks, revealed that there were over 100 entries submitted this year, which is the second edition, noting that the entries were three times more than the maiden edition’s.
Oyedele also expressed his delight at the quality of entries for this year, stating that they were far better than last year’s, a proof, he argued, that Nigerian journalists were fast rising to the occasion as far as investigations were concerned.
Uyi Akpata, a PwC partner who coordinated the panel of Judges, gave the breakdown of entries across the four categories, thus: Business & Economy Reporting with (45 entries); Tax Reporting (11 entries); Capital Market Reporting (12 entries), and SMEs (12 entries).
Winners for each category were announced as follows:
Business & Economy Reporting- Victor Ekwealor
Tax Reporting – Collins Nweze
Capital Markets Reporting – Nkiruka Nnorom
SMEs– Isaac Anyaogu
