The Guardian correspondent wins best Women’s Economic Empowerment award

The Guardian correspondent in Abuja, Tina Abeku, has won the first prize for the Most Outstanding Newspaper article on Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) in Nigeria.

Her report also beat 11 other contenders to clinch the prize for the overall best-written WEE article at the competition, which aims to promote WEE reporting in Nigeria.

The award was organised by the Partnership for Advancing Women’s Economic Development (PAWED) in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the development Research Projects Center (dRPC).

Abeku’s article titled ‘Knocks over poor access to Nigeria’s N154 billion WEE Interventions,’ published in The Guardian on May 14, x-rayed budgetary provisions and allocations to projects specifically targeted at WEE, showing shortcomings in access to such allocations despite claims of successful implementation of the projects.

At a special event organised to celebrate the winners and launch a WEE monitoring and evaluation framework yesterday, Director of Programmes, dRPC, Dr. Stanley Ukpai, encouraged the winners to continue to promote WEE through their reports stating that the central role of the media in budget monitoring, tracking and evaluation of WEE specific projects captured in the national budget will ensure the dividends of democracy touches the grassroots.

Other winners at the competition include Temitope Mustapha, who won best in broadcast, Grace Obike of the Nation, second place, print and Victoria Onehi of 120 Edge News.com (online).