CNN honors TMP member

AFTER SEVEN STRAIGHT YEARS of rejection, the same persistence that kept Nigerian journalist and TMP member Oluwatoyosi Ogunseye chasing CNN's annual MultiChoice African Journalist Awards finally earned her one of the coveted prizes. 

Ogunseye, a senior editor at Nigeria's The Punch, was one of 17 category winners from a pool of 1,407 entries representing 42 African nations.  CNN honored the winners with a week-long workshop followed by a June 25 gala in Johannesburg, CNN said on its website.

In those previous seven years, Oluwatoyosi had never earned even a nomination for the award. 

All that time, "I kept trying because I wanted it badly," she told TMP by email.  "When you want something badly, you go after it badly." 

"It's also the most prestigious (award) and the dream of every African journalist," Ogunseye added.  "When you are a CNN winner, it means you have done a lot of things right on the job." 

But at long last she got her breakthrough.  When Ogunseye learned she was nominated, she was overjoyed.

"I am still ecstatic," she told The Punch. “The moment I got the call — I stood up and tears just filled my eyes!"

Ogunseye's specialty is covering crime with a penchant for investigative reporting, and she is a flexible writer who's covered everything from fashion to food science. 

This year, she won the Health and Medical category prize for her enterprising story "LUTH's Ransome-Kuti Children's Center: Cauldron where two babies die weekly".  The heartbreaking piece is packed with wrenching images and the words of grieved parents who sound more like victims than clients of a hospital: 

While weary looking mothers sit on the wooden chairs in the reception area, the frequent shrieks from babies in the clinic unsettle everyone in the environment, which is a far cry from being clean.

There are a few men around in this section of the hospital, which has only two dirty toilets, already flooded by water. There is no bathroom.

"I hope that baby survives, he has been in pain since he was transferred here,” mutters one of the women sitting on the bench.

The baby did not survive. And that was the second one that week. An average of two babies die a week at the centre. The number could be as high as five.

After a few minutes, his mother comes out of the hospital and screams profanities at the medical personnel on duty.

She feels that they did not do enough to save her five-day-old baby. The doctors and nurses ignore her and continue attending to other babies who are in critical condition.

Another mother calls the attention of a nurse to a baby, who is coughing beside her child. She is afraid that the baby with the cough could infect her two-day-old daughter. But there is nothing she can do about it; she is sharing a bed with two other children.

The prize-winning story was born after a colleague at The Punch had taken her child to the Children's Centre and was disappointed with the treatment. The editor assigned Ogunseye to investigate.

"The main challenge was staying in the ward for two days," Ogunseye said. "I had to pretend to be an aunty to one of the sick babies with her mother's help."

"Getting pictures for the story was another challenge because it was a very small ward, and I couldn't have taken pictures without anyone noticing me. I taught the mother that helped me how to use my camera, and she took the pictures in the middle of the night when other mothers were sleeping," Ogunseye recounted.

While the story is gripping, it was Ogunseye's approach to reporting the story that ultimately got her noticed by the committee.

"I liked her tenacity. I liked her initiative, and her consistency," award panelist Zippora Musau, Managing Editor, Magazines, for Kenya's The Standard Group, explained to CNN. "She stayed on the story, and she wanted to get her story at the end of the day. It didn't matter how long it took."

Ogunseye says that the award has been one of the best things in her life, and her career has already seen a boost as a result, including a scholarship, cash prize and a promotion to Acting News Editor of Sunday Punch. Even her long-time sources trust her more.

She hopes the attention the award brings will help build faith in Nigerian journalism. Her country has a reputation for pervasive corruption in government and media, but Ogunseye focuses instead on the good work being done in spite of the obstacles in a developing nation.

"It's amazing how much we do considering the fact that getting information in Nigeria is a Herculean task," she remarked. "Nobody wants to talk! And this is not restricted to government. Even among the people, the functions of the media are yet to be fully understood."

She is optimistic about journalism and democracy in her country, and she is optimistic about her role. Nigerian journalists excel at everything they set their minds on, Ogunseye insists. And she wants to be an inspiration for the younger generation, and a visionary leader that people can follow without fear.

As a Christian, she is committed to finding and telling the truth in everything she does. And with so many important life-and-death stories to tell, she says she's already got a dream job in journalism that allows her to do that.

But Ogunseye is not content to be a CNN African Journalist Award category winner. She wants to be CNN's overall winner, a prize that this year went to Kenyan Fatuma Noor.

Ogunseye says she will keep trying until she earns CNN's top prize for herself, following in the footsteps of another Nigerian journalist and TMP member Shola Oshunkeye. And after that, she wants a Pulitzer. With her track record of persistence and excellence, success is, it would seem, only a matter of time.