For the second year running, THISDAY journalist, Martins Ifijeh, emerged the winner of the 2019 Nordica Media Merit Award (NMMA print category) for excellence in fertility reporting.
Ifijeh, who won with his entry ‘Heavy Metals and the Pain of Infertility’, was announced as one of the three winners of the highly competitive annual awards at the presentation ceremony in Lagos yesterday.
Other winners are Olasumbo Modupe of Lagos Television and Anthonia Obokor of Business Day Newspapers. They won in the electronic and online categories respectively.
Ifijeh’s winning piece highlighted how heavy metals and industrial chemicals from oil exploration in Nigeria has increased the risk of infertility and deprived couples exposed to them from having babies.
The fellow of the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) in Washington DC, United States, and an Alumnus of Columbia University, New York and Rhodes University, South Africa, has won a number of international and local awards, including the 2017 Early Childhood Development Reporting Awards in Washington DC; 2016 Nigerian Healthcare Excellence Award ‘print category’, the 2018 Nordica Media Merit Award and a host of others.
The Managing Director, Nordica Fertility Centre, Dr. Abayomi Ajayi, described the award as part of the organisation’s efforts to reward excellence in fertility reportage in Nigeria, adding that such quality stories will help raise more awareness on reproductive health issues in the country.
The winners of each of the categories were given plaques and N250, 000 cash prize each.
Members of the jury board included the Editor-in-Chief/General Manager Publications of Vanguard Newspapers, Gbenga Adefaye; the Group Editor, The Nation Newspapers, Gbenga Omotoso, among others.
