Veteran journalist, Dele Cole appointed chairman of Quill Awards

  Promasidor Nigeria Limited, maker of Cowbell Milk, has announced the appointment of five distinguished professionals in their various fields as judges for its Quill Awards.

The ‘Promasidor Quill Awards’ is a platform in Nigeria to reward journalists for dedicated news reportage on industry, education, corporate social responsibility and nutrition issues all year round.

The awards cover five categories – Brand Advocate of the year, Best Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report of the year, Most Educative Report of the year, Best Report on Nutrition, and the Best Photo Story of the year.

Andrew Enahoro, head of legal and public relations of the company, said the judges were carefully chosen because of the regard the company attached to the awards.

He listed the judges as Patrick Dele Cole, a veteran journalist who will serve as chairman of the panel; Emevwo Biakolo, Dean of School of Media and Communication of the Pan African University; Jide Ologun, chairman, Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, Lagos chapter; Kadaria Ahmed, former editor of 234 Next, and Kelechi Obi Amadi, a renowned international painter and photographer.

Cole, special adviser to The Guardian since 2002 and delegate to the United Nations and the African Union (1976, 1989, 1989, and 1990), obtained a Masters Degree in History and Political Science from University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, and in 1969 bagged a Ph.D from Stephen Berhens Cohen College, Cambridge.

Biakolo graduated from the University of Ibadan in 1978, where he studied literature, philosophy and classics as a federal scholar. He completed his M.A. in 1984, graduating at the top of his class and was awarded a doctorate in 1988.

He later joined the editorial board of The Guardian and wrote a weekly column that commanded very wide following in Nigeria. Besides social and political questions, he was especially concerned with family issues in his writing.

Ologun, a principal solicitor at Jide Ologun & Co., is the chairman of the Lagos chapter of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations.

Kadaria Ahmed, an influential journalist, is a co-founder of Reinvent Media Limited and formerly senior producer with British Broadcasting Corporation between 1996 and 2004. She was also the editor of the now defunct, 234 Next newspaper in Lagos.

Kelechi Amadi is a dextrous painter, photographer and lawyer, but however things took a turn when his passion for the arts led him to pursue a career in photography and painting.