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The day Dora Akunyili welcomed the Future!

Wednesday, 24 June 2009

Presenting The Future Awards project material to the Minister, Prof. Dora Akunyili

“What’s up?” Dora Akunyili, Minister of Information and Communications, piped up as she welcomed the team of The Future Nigeria Awards, upon a visit to the Minister’s Office in Abuja on Monday, 15th of June - kicking off the visit with a tone of delightful informality and sharing banters with her guests.

The Minister invited the team to formally introduce the project to the Information Ministry with the hope of exploring ways that the Ministry could partner with the project in order to extend its impact across the nation and beyond.

Organizers of the Awards, RedSTRAT, were represented by its Directors, Emilia Asim-Ita, Adebola Williams and Chude Jideonwo, and selected winners including the Business-Owner of the Year- Mosumola Umoru, two-time Best Use of Technology Winner- Bamidele Odufuye, Sportsperson of the Year- Yagazie Chukwumerije, On-Air Personality of the Year (Radio) -Tyeng Gang, and last year’s Journalist of the Year- Abdulkareem Baba Aminu of the Daily Trust. The Minister also came fully armed with her officials and other partners of the Ministry whom she excitedly invited to meet with the young people.

The Minister of Information with The Future Awards team

“What most excited me was when the organisers tried to brief her on the project, she remembered all the details; the age of the award winners, the purpose and all; it showed that this wasn’t a perfunctory ‘courtesy visit, but that she was passionate about the ideals that The Future Awards is based upon and ultimately about Nigeria,” said Abuja-based Tyeng Gang.

During the meeting, a short video of the event was shown to the Minister as well as an album whilst the Creative Director, Chude Jideonwo, gave a brief on the vision, the successes, and the future direction for the project. He emphasized that the Awards was just the icing on the cake, as there are Youth Town Hall Meetings, the Pre-Award “Do Something” Conference and the Post-Award School Seminars to extend the impact of the awards, and to reach as many young people as possible - from the upwardly mobile through to the grassroots.

“The truth is that most times people; who try to reach young people use predictable, dare I say boring, tools and platforms that cannot engage the attention of the youth, and that is why for years many people and organizations have tried to re-orientate young people without achieving much,” he said. Jideonwo also explained to the minister that the RedSTRAT team used those channels that young people love like entertainment and glamour to attract them to the message of hope and change, and to show them role models as young as themselves that can inspire them to concrete achievements. “We have managed to combine excitement with development, because we are not interested in making noise without impact – we want to change our generation for real,” he said.

The Minister interacted with each of the winners, and was most excited to meet Mosumola Umora, an under-30 female farmer who is also a Goldman Sachs scholar – and spent a number of minutes engaging her on her financing, motivations and challenges. “Wow,” Professor Akunyili exclaimed as she shook her head, visibly impressed. “I am delighted to be hearing this, because this is part of what I tell people all the time,” She responded after the presentation. “It is important to show Nigerians who are doing brilliantly well so that the generality can continue to have hope and faith in the nation. I look at you and I am so excited, and I promise that I will work with you so that more young people across the country can see your winners, for people like Mosun (Umoru) to share their stories, and know that this country can be bright, and it will be bright.”

“Her warmth was amazing,” Emilia Asim-Ita said after the visit, “And it was infectious. Recently of course, there’s been some controversy over the Minister’s Re-branding project, but it was refreshing I must tell you to see this genuine passion, and to see that she didn’t just invite us for the sake of pretension, that she had paid attention to the work that we are doing for young people across the country. That was most refreshing – and inspiring.”

The Minister also requested for the Awards to partner with the re-branding campaign across the country, inviting the winners to speak with youths in each state the re-branding club is visiting, starting with Ondo State. Before leaving, the award organizers also requested to partner fully with the Nigeria Television Authority and the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria as part of a Strategic Partnership with the Information Ministry towards the next edition of the Awards.

The Future Nigeria Awards team meanwhile continues to keep its promise to make impact with the awards all year round: its Operations Director, Adebola Williams, just returned from the British Council Changemakers Project (under the World Economic Forum) in Cape town and it officially wrapped up the Lagos end of the Schools Seminars last Friday with a large Seminar for schools in the Yaba area, which held at Bellina College.

The train now moves to Osun State, with a seminar in Ife.

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