Muheeb Mashood reports
Abdulrasheed Hammed, the incumbent vice president of the National Association of Campus Journalists(NACJ), UDUS Chapter has claimed the silver laurel at the international investigative award, held at Dakar, Senegal on 26 April, 2023.
The Prize for Investigative Journalism (PAJI) is an initiated program co-organized by the Franco-African platform of journalists Media and Democracy (M&D) and Centre for the Study of Information Science and Technology (CESTI). It aims to value, promote and defend investigative journalism in Africa.
Featuring many journalists across Africa, Abdulrasheed Hammad, a student journalist of Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, made it to the last three to become the silver prize winner for the category of the investigative journalism award.
Abdulrasheed won big with the investigative report on abandoned multi millionaire health project in Sokoto state, where he exposed how the contracts were abandoned due to failure of fund disbursement by the contractors.
Speaking with The News Digest press, Abdulrahseed expressed his joy for claiming the silver recognition of achievement.
“I am very excited for being among the top three winners of this Africa Prize for Investigative Journalism (PAJI) Award. It is a great opportunity that my investigative story was rated in the top three in the whole of Africa. This is a testament to the quality and impactful investigative stories that ICIR is producing,” he said.
Abdulrasheed claimed that he had less expectation to shine at the PAJI award, for he didn’t expect such an huge recognition. Applying for an opportunity is what his tail symbolises.
His words: “When I applied for the award, I didn’t expect that I would be shortlisted since it is an international award, but I was lucky to be shortlisted. This is the first international award I would be shortlisted for as an investigative journalist and I believe this would serve as an encouragement for me to do more impactful stories.”
Speaking further, he noted that it is fun to win the award but it’s not funny to execute the task.Journalism is a profession that required an extraordinary carefulness during duty execution process. Threat and intimidation are almost inevitable because corrupted people always want to conceal their deprave acts.
“I faced a lot of challenges while executing the story because I was afraid of physical attacks during the process of my investigation.
“While doing the story, I received threats from the contractors. Some contractors threatened to carry me with DSS, one contractor even rained curses on me and some contractors threatened me with court cases but I didn’t relent since my plan was to make sure I balance everything in my report. While I was doing the story, they even offered me a bribe to kill the story but I rejected it and I was very careful to prevent myself from a physical attack. I also faced challenges in getting access to some important information that would enrich my story further but the FOIs written to the concerned authorities were not responded to”, he noted.
He therefore advised the upcoming journalists to expose themselves to opportunities, not only by applying but by also hoping to be shortlisted for it.
“Upcoming journalists should apply for any opportunity they come across and should hope to be among the shortlisted applicants,”he advised.