Journalism Quill Awards will go international – Andrew Enahoro

Andrew Enahoro, head legal and public relations, Promasidor Nigeria Limited, makers of Cowbell Milk, in this interview with Daniel Obi speaks on the company’s plan to internationalise the Quill awards.

What are you looking forward to in next year’s Quill Awards?

For 2014 edition we are looking forward to more categories, to a lovely event that will herald and pick winners such that it will be appreciable and memorable and we are hoping to sign off certain memorandum of understanding with a company in the UK that will actually elevate the contest. We are thinking of having champion of champions among the winners of the seven categories created. The overall champion will go for a programme in the UK.

Unfortunately, I can’t announce the specific details now because we are still working it out but hopefully in the New Year some of the representatives of the institution would be invited to come down for a meeting with us and few of you will be invited to meet with them and then we will officially announce the details. We are still negotiating to sign an agreement with the company which we believe will be sustainable.

Why did Promasidor increase the award categories to seven?

Really, we have two additional categories in the coming edition; we have what we call Future Writer of the Year which is to encourage upcoming and young writers. That is to say we have to fill up the chain, while we are still celebrating the veterans; we are also hoping to elevate their status by training them, we have to encourage the young ones at least make them increase their own talent and make them become more vibrant.

The other one has to do with Best Report on Children. As I earlier mentioned we have taken time to listen to the recommendations from the panel of judges, feedback from journalists and considered the growing media trend to improve the entry categories for this year. We increased the number of categories to accommodate more entries and also created new ones to encourage young and upcoming writers.

What are the criteria employed for selection of the award categories?

As I earlier said the criteria for selection of the various categories came up from stakeholders’ engagement. Based on the suggestions we received we had many categories to consider, but we decided to aim at our near target market, and our market is our principal consumers really, this is because Promasidor is not government and not Andrew Enahoro, our principal consumers are the children and the family.

What informed your decision to send winners to school?

Why we prefer sending winners to school is because of our belief that journalism is actually an intellectual work and the best gift you can give to a man is to train him. It is easy to give money but at the end of the day money will finish but with training, you have knowledge and you will be a catalyst in your own environment because you will definitely pass on that knowledge to others and that’s what make environment better.

Yes we will give you working tools but we will make sure we train you. When the winners of the 2013 edition relive their experiences of what they have learnt at the Pan Atlantic University, it will also challenge other people to write more and to also submit entries for the next edition.

Can you list the five previous categories of the awards?

We have the Best Report on Nutrition of the Year, the Best CSR and Industry Report of the Year, the Best Education Report, the Best Photo Story of the Year and we have the Brand Advocate of the Year. Then there are slight twists which I want to use this opportunity to share with you, apart from brand advocate which really is to celebrate journalists who have actually been mentioning us in positive light, even if it is negative light we do not bother, all others, we really want to be in the back seat.

If you are reporting on CSR, please don’t think because Cowbell National Secondary Schools Mathematics Competition (NASSMAC) is a good initiative or Cowbell Football Academy is a good initiative or other of our CSR initiatives, that it will engender you and give you a leg-up, it is not to say it will not be considered because our judges are impartial but we prefer to be in the back seat for the others.

How do you manage entries from outside Lagos going by challenges posed by NIPOST and other postal agencies?

That was the critical reason that informed us having our awards on online platform, what that means is that it is not necessary for anybody to send his entry through NIPOST or DHL, but rather from the comfort of his or her office or business centre, he or she could send in entries Pan Nigeria. We are also creating awareness through posters we distribute to media houses, editorial write-ups, adverts and road shows.

How sustainable is your CSR Initiative?

When we started our CSR initiative, one of the things we did was to sit down and draw up a strategy, and this CSR strategy is what influences our engagements with the public. So if we have a thousand and one request from the public for support, it must be able to harness what we are doing and align with our engagements and not only our engagements but that which is sustainable, that will be year on year.

In our CSR strategy, we have broad categories of healthcare and nutrition, education, sports, empowerment and mentoring and good governance. In education category, we have Cowbell National Secondary Schools Mathematics Competition (NASSMAC) and it has been going on for 13 years.

At the last count we had close to 40,000 entries for the exams. In sports we have an engagement with Para soccer, we have cowbell football academy and host of others which are sustainable and that’s the only way we can actually manage our engagements with the public in terms of CSR initiatives.

Year on year, we increase the scope and time of all our CSR activities we engaged in, for example when we launched the Cowbell Football Academy, it used to be grassroots academy that went moribund, but then again we had problem with partners, but this time now we had a good partner in Multi Sports headed by Dudu Orume.

We started with only one training centre which was at the national stadium when we got children from Alaka, Surulere, some portion of Tejuosho and barracks and others. We now have it in four centres in Lagos. The original plan was to divide Nigeria into three geo-political zones, but we decided to roll out gradually. It is my hope and prayer that may be in next two or three years we will now go to another zone and gradually get children recruited.

In NASSMAC, I think two years ago, we only had 20,000 students, as at last year we hit almost 40,000 students, so we will continue to grow in those sectors we are operating in, in terms of critical mass. It is like Quill awards now, last year we had five categories, this new edition, we will have seven categories and we hope more categories will be added to reward journalists in years to come.

What are the benefits you derive from CSR?

When you engaged in a community in all these kind of initiatives, your joy or immediate return is never financial, for instance, our NASSMAC winner in 2006 actually graduated with 5.0 GPA in medical college in Russia this year, one of the boys also has authored a mathematics text book. So when you hear this kind of thing, it will seem like you won gold.

Now if I seat back and look at it professionally, the immediate benefit is that people get to know about Promasidor brands but more particularly is that people are challenged at corporate level, that they should not wait for government, that if this company can come up with this initiative, others can also emulate it and also introduce other CSR measures that can touch peoples’ life in a community.

Like I hear that in Lagos State, they have started local government competition among the youths, and this is what takes the youths off the streets if it is well handled through good mentorship, leadership and training. Once you engaged the youths, you find out that, a lot of ill values will be curtailed, the idle mind is a devil’s workshop, and so good CSR have a way of impacting on the society.