Ford Foundation announces awards nomination process
…Tips Father Kukuah to head committee
THE Ford Foundation has announced the selection of Development Initiative Network, DIN, to manage the application process for the foundation’s $1 million jubilee Transparency Awards.
It also named Rev. Fr. Matthew Kukah to chair an eight-member National Awards Committee that will work with DIN to oversee the selection of 10 awardees.
At press briefing in Lagos, held that the Foundation’s office at Banana Island in Ikoyi, Ford Foundation Representative for West Africa, Dr Adhiambo Odaga said that the award is aimed at achieving two objectives.
According to her, the awards will recognize innovative projects and programmes that promote transparent, effective and accountable governance at the community level in Nigeria. In addition, Odaga explained that the foundation equally aims to showcase the impact of the projects embarked upon by the recipients, as models for deepening democracy, good governance and anti-corruption across the country.
She said: “We envision a future in which West Africans and their governments leverage the region’s extraordinary human and natural resources for the common good. That future, in which all people have both the right and opportunity to achieve their future, begins with citizens’ involvement and good governance.”
She further explained that the convergence of the Ford Foundation’s golden jubilee in West Africa and Nigeria’s 50th independence anniversary gives the awards special relevance adding that “the one-time programme, will conclude at the end of the jubilees year in September 2011 and the selection of the awardees will be supervised by a National Awards Committee chaired by Rev Kukah.”
On his part, Kukah commended the foundation for the innovation just as he called on other foundations to take a cue from Ford Foundation.
He said “The award is a source of encouragement and also an effort to encourage the winners to do more. This should also encourage other foundations to toe the same path that Ford Foundation has taken.”
