Why we are honouring Daily Trust

One wonders about The Oba of Benin Green Award. What is the link between an institutional award project and the Oba? The project was instituted and the first set of people and organisations honoured last year, August 2010. In our close working with rural communities over the years, we have found that our rural communities […]

One wonders about The Oba of Benin Green Award. What is the link between an institutional award project and the Oba?

The project was instituted and the first set of people and organisations honoured last year, August 2010. In our close working with rural communities over the years, we have found that our rural communities need enlightenment on the environment. They need the knowledge of their practices which are unhealthy to the environment. To educate the communities, you need traditional rulers. They are closer to the people than governments and nongovernment organisations (NGOs). We require them in our efforts to protect the environment. NGOs take development projects to communities. A borehole is established, for example, and the NGO goes off to other pursuits, leaving the borehole, inadvertently though, to function and to fall to disrepair a little while afterwards. Rural facilities and natural resources need the guidance of a traditional ruler to endure. Traditional rulers are necessary for sustainable development in our communities. This vital role which has been relegated by our contemporary history needs a reawakening and the Oba of Benin Green Award project is a step in that direction.

It amuses me when some people talk about traditional rulers being given constitutional roles. They have a busy role already if only they would set to work on what they naturally should do. There is this saying: Soldier comes, soldier goes, the barracks remain’. Traditional rulers are the barracks in our communities. If they would concentrate on seeing that their communities are not violated by such practices as indiscriminate bush burning, felling of trees, pollution of water sources, and so on, they would be helping humanity in ways that the constitution can’t even envisage.

This has been the conviction behind the Oba of Benin Green Award.  His Royal Majesty, the Oba of Benin is one of the most articulate traditional rulers in the world today. And there has been a rich measure of precedence to inspire him in sustainable environment. Our forefathers saw the light that flooding and gully erosion could devastate the city and constructed giant sacred grooves to protect Benin. That’s why today you could scarcely experience any acute flooding in Benin, heavy as the rains may be.

You are the national coordinator. What is the place in it for the Oba of Benin, the identity of this project?

As the coordinator, I’m to ensure the implementation of the ideals of the project. The Oba of Benin Green Award has levels of administration. There is the Patrons Board, of which His Royal Majesty is the paramount Host and which includes some other royal fathers. We have the Screening Committee which makes recommendations of which individuals and organisations should have our awards because of what they are doing to promote environmental health. Let’s take Daily Trust for example. We are looking at stories on community information, on agriculture, on the physical environment. The only problem we had with Daily Trust (as we were considering it for an award) was that it doesn’t have aggressive marketing in the South. We pitched it with a few other newspapers, took an inventory of what it had been publishing on the environment, the slant of the publications, the language, the volume of stories that make the news, raise the issues, and make the future; and picked Daily Trust for a sterling showing on those indices. We are careful how we come up with awardees. Look at those we are giving awards this year, including the president. Lots of people don’t know that President Goodluck Jonathan is the first environmental scientist and scholar to be elected president of any nation. That is not the only basis for our award, but you will recall the case of Obama, President Barrack Obama of United States. When he emerged president, the Peace Nobel people looked at him, his mindset, what he would be likely to do, and in just a few months after he reached the White House, they gave him the Nobel Peace Prize for his ‘extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,’ being part of the citation for the award.  For Jonathan, a lot of time has passed. Do you know that President Jonathan was publishing African Energy & Environment news journal when he was the deputy governor in Bayelsa?

We realized in our assessments that Daily Trust is very good in environment (reporting). Environment is a passion. It is knowledge-based. You need specific knowledge of the dynamism of the environment to appreciate the environment and for it not to sound abstract to you. We have this knowledge which places us in the position to determine who is doing what to help the environment.  Daily Trust has its prejudices, often in defence of the North, but in environmental reportage, you have offered much to all. It’s what made us put you up for our award.

So many organizations which have come up with award programmes like yours have failed the test of credibility. How may we believe that you are different?

If you read the letter nominating Daily Trust for the Oba of Benin Green Media Award, we didn’t ask for even one kobo.  We are too committed to professionalism to be materialistic. Our institution is too sacred, too value-based to go asking for money from those we honour with awards.

By the name Oba of Benin, do you not feel that the public could see the project as a sectional one?

No. The old Benin Kingdom reached to as far as Lagos, which is called Eko. If you go to the Oba of Lagos today, he would tell you that he is a prince of Benin. United Kingdom is not as big as the Benin Kingdom but the monarchy there has a wide sphere of influence. We need institutions such as ours to correct our way of restricting national issues to specific regions because of where the personalities involved come from.

You said the Oba of Benin Green Award has a Patrons Board. Who are the members of the board?

The Ochi Idoma of Idomaland is a member. The Olugbo of Ugbo, Oba Obateru Akinrutan, the former managing director of OBAT Oil, is a member. We have written to the Oba of Lagos and some others. Ours is a young organisation that we are still building. Many other royal fathers will be joining the board as we advance and spread out.

The first reaction of an average Nigerian, on reading or hearing of The Oba of Benin Green Award as it relates to environment could be why such obscure and unlikely subject as environment instead of the more all-encompassing agriculture, farming if you like. Why did you not pick agriculture, the term everyone readily identifies with?

Green these days represents the totality of man’s activities on earth. Environment is life and life is environment. Agriculture is a set of activities in the environment. One of the individuals to receive award this year is Alhaji Kura Abubakar Wodi. He lives in Gwagwalada, Abuja, and is the president of the Nigerian Rice Farmers Association. In that position, he works to encourage rice farming. Beyond that, Kura has been crusading to make Nigerians accept that Nigeria can produce the rice the citizens need without importation of rice if the physical environment is right and the government does what it needs to do to promote rice farming. We have decided to honour such a person because we agree with him that agriculture is vital to national development.

Our award institution is just starting in a way and we are encouraged by the conviction that by the time we mature and get to sensitize our traditional rulers to roles they can play in their respective areas of influence to manage the environment well and raise environmental activities which include soil and aquatic farming, we would have the right basis for speedy national development. And, don’t forget that many of our traditional rulers these days are highly educated and vastly experienced. The Oba of Benin was a Bachelor of Science holder and a super permanent secretary in his time in the civil service. He has practiced in both the public and private sectors. He has seen it all. It’s the same with many of our traditional rulers. What is missing is that as custodians of the environment they don’t relate in common grounds to promote common interests through exploitation of comparative advantage. They instead become cultural relics in their separate fiefdoms once they mount the throne. We must correct this.

You said your award project started last year. Who were the first beneficiaries?

Emir of Kano, The Guardian, Awake, Professor Yinka Omoregbe, the first woman professor on environment. There was Cathrine Orosonyo, and Deji Badmus of Channels who won an award based on his reports of happenings in the Niger Delta and Plateau State.

Apart from Daily Trust, Who are those to receive your awards this year?

President Goodluck Jonathan is one, and he is being honoured based on his contributions to environmental sustainability. To start with he was educated from his first degree to his PhD on the environment. He has since been practising as an environmental scientist   and publisher before now of an environment journal. Second on our list is Daily Trust.  The third is Professor Odiete of University of Benin. Number four is Access Bank. The fifth is Dr Newton Jibnor, the man we call the Desert Warrior because of his contribution to the fight against desert encroachment. The other one is the man who cleaned up Lagos, Ola Oresanya, the managing Director of Lagos State Waste Management Authority.  Calabar is winning the Best Inner City Award, and Rivers State is to receive what we call Built School Environment Award.

What would be the highlight of the award Ceremony in October?

It will be an assemblage of eminent personalities. Speaker of the House of Representatives Aminu Tambuwal will be the Royal Guest of Honour. Numerous state house of assembly speakers will be in attendance. Senate minority leader, George Akume will be the chairman of the occasion.

Now, can we talk about you?

I am a journalist, and I have practiced for 23 years, majoring in energy and environment. I am concerned that in the process of exploiting energy we destroy the environment. I publish Green News and we are working on a cable news medium.