THE need for organisations to be more socially responsible is growing by the day in Nigeria. And some corporate establishments in the country are responding positively to this call in different ways. This is why many organisations that see Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as just giving back to host communities, have stepped up the game with stakeholders’ engagement.

One stakeholder many businesses in Nigeria are engaging with, in their CSR project, is the media. Some do this through organising training for journalists; some others instituted media awards. They often say they do this because of the critical role the media plays in the society and not because of the massive publicity they often benefit from partnering with the media.

But many of the firms, which had instituted the media award to encourage and appreciate journalists, tend to be more concerned about using the reward project to better position their brand and products if the criteria designed for winning entries are put on spotlight.

In most cases, winners emerged through the volume of patronage their reports have impacted on the organisations instituting the awards. Only few of the entries are immune from the toga of what critics have tagged ‘patronising and image laundering’ reports, which are intentionally targeted at winning these awards.

A journalist x-raying some of the entries for one of the awards described the entries as “advertorials,” which actually rob the media organisations of revenue. According to him, the money invested into the award is got back in triple fold, if the number of advertorials published for the company is counted; yet the firm claims it is into CSR project.

However one organisation, which appears to be unique and different in its approach to rewarding exceptional performance within the Fourth Estate of the Realm is Promasidor Nigeria Limited through its Quill Award.

The first edition of the award was held in Lagos recently. The award has five categories: Brand Advocate of the year, Best Corporate Social Responsible Reporter of the year, Most Educative Reporter of the year, Best Report on Nutrition and the Best Photo Story of the Year.  Five distinguished professionals were picked to screen the entries. Ambassador Patrick Dele Cole was the chairman of the screening committee. Other members of the panel were former Editor of Next newspaper, Kaderia Ahmed; Dean, School of Media and Communication, Pan African University, Prof. Emevwo Biakolo; Chairman, Nigeria Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), Lagos State Chapter, Mr. Jide Ologun; and Kelechi Amadi, an international painter and photographer.

The Brand Advocate of the Year was won by Ngozi Okpalakunne, a journalist with Champion Newspaper;  Dan Obi of BusinessDay Newspaper emerged Best CSR Reporter of the Year; Tunbosun Ogundare of National Mirror Newspaper smiled home with the Most Educative Report of the Year prize; just as Alexander Chiejina of BusinessDay Newspaper won the Best Nutrition Report of the Year medal. The Best Photo Story of the Year went to Sadiq Adelakun of Punch Newspaper.

But unlike other media awards instituted solely by a brand, the winning entries in the Quill Award were not just reports about the company or its product. This was hailed as a departure from the practice of similar organisations that have come up with one form of award or other.

For instance, the Best Photo Story was not about Promasidor, its activities or its products. It was about a man lamenting his loss in a fire incident. The Best Nutrition Report of the Year was also a story, which did not report Promasidor, its brand or directly its products. Although, the other two winners, besides the Brand Advocate Award which no doubt should be about its brand and its products, still had a national outlook and not just blindly reporting the organisation as many of the other companies expected the winning entries to be.

The Managing Director of the company, Mr. Keith Richard, in his welcome speech at the event, reiterated the resolve of organization to continue to improve upon the process until perfection is achieved. “When Promasidor starts something, it continues to grow it,” Richard stated, while promising that the award will be a reference point in Nigeria. According to him, the award is meant to promote excellent performance in the media by responding promptly to capacity building challenge faced by journalists. It is on this note that the prizes came with training programme for the winners.

Another unique aspect of the Quill Award as regards the training is the liberty given to winners to choose training package that will suit individual winners, while SMC of Pan- African University has been engaged to facilitate the training programme.

For Ambassador Patrick Dele Cole, there is no better time to reward journalistic excellence than now. He said that Promasidor is not into self-seeking endeavour just as he also promised that the award would be better as there are plans to improve on the categories. Cole, who commended some of the entries for being inventive, called on media owners and editors to put in place training for reporters because of the plagiarism noticed in some of the entries, which were not deliberate, according to him.

All the winners, who were elated after their entries were adjudged the best, applauded the firm for instituting the award.

Some journalists who had entries that could go for any of the categories did not put in their entries because they said that the stories were not about company, its activities or products.  But Promasidor proved them wrong as not all the entries and winning stories were about Promasidor.

The Managing Director of CMC Connect, Yomi-Badejo Okusanya, said that the whole essence of CSR is to give back to the society with no aim to get anything back except the association from doing the project.

“When you build a borehole or hospital, things that do not give you benefits in naira and kobo, that actually constitutes more of CSR, though the company is supposed to get some goodwill from it. But writing about them, I am not sure that qualifies as CSR because it should benefit the community a lot more than it should benefit the organization doing the project,” insisted Okusanya.