NAAJ was initially administered by an interim board comprising the following: Eyobong Ita, president; Adam Ouologuem, vice president/Print; Segun Aderiye, vice president/broadcast; Tai Balofin, secretary; Laolu Akande, treasurer; Femi Odere, publisher Representative; Ben Bangoura, broadcast Representative; and Paul Ndiho, Student Representative. On Sept. 13, 2004, Howard University donated a free office space for the NAAJ national secretariat at the John H. Johnson School of Communications. Since its formation, NAAJ has held journalism workshops for its members in Chicago, New York Washington, D.C. and Virginia Conference call workshops also are frequently held to assist with the professional development of its members. During its first national convention in September 2005, NAAJ honored six outstanding contributors to the growth of African journalism, including two former African presidents – South Africa’s Nelson Mandela and Mali’s Alpha Oumar Konare. On Sept. 10, 2005, Mandela was bestowed with a “Lifetime Achievement Award” for exemplary leadership worthy of emulation by other African leaders, as well as his respect for press freedom. Konare, then chairperson of the Commission of the African Union, was recognized with a “Press Freedom Award” for his role in securing and maintaining press freedom before and during his presidential tenure in Mali. Other honorees were: John and Loie Quinn, founders of the Freedom Forum’s Chips Quinn program for minority college journalism students in the United States. They were awarded the “Advancement of Minority Journalists Award.” Jannette Dates, then dean of the John H. Johnson School of Communications at Howard University, also received the NAAJ President’s Award for the school’s support to the organization, which includes the provision of a free space for the NAAJ National Secretariat. NAAJ also took a moment to acknowledge the unprecedented accomplishment of Nigerian-born Dele Olojede, a former foreign editor at Newsday, a New York daily. Olojede won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for his in-depth reports on Rwanda, 10 years after a genocide claimed about 800,000 lives in that East African country. He thus became the first African-born journalist to win the Pulitzer, America’s highest recognition for journalists. On Nov. 4, 2006, Eyobong Ita became NAAJ’s first elected president. The president leads an eight-member board and serves as the group’s chief executive officer. Elections are held every two years for positions on the board, which governs the organization. Ita has since organized African journalists to form an NAAJ chapter in the United Kingdom to form the first NAAJ chapter. At the chapter’s inaugural meeting in London on Dec. 16, 2006, Sandra Nyaira, an exiled Zimbabwean journalist, was elected to head the chapter’s interim board. In 2008, Ita was reelected to lead the organization in his second and final term. That term expired in 2010. However, the group has been inactive since fall 2009. On August 13, 2014, the group was revived. The first conference call attracted members from New York, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Maryland and Illinois.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 23:49:23 +0000
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