…Top 5 finalists win N5m prizes, internship opportunities

By Juliet Umeh, edited by Sola Ogundipe

Worried by the persistence of  myths around the Human Papillomavirus, HPV, vaccines in Nigeria particularly in Lagos State, medical experts including the former First Lady of Kebbi State, Dr. Zainab Bagudu and Dr Ayo Renner (aka the Noisy Naija Paediatrician), among others have called on the Nigerian youths to amplify the benefits of the vaccine using the social media tools.

They made the call at the Nigeria Solidarity Support Fund, NSSF, event where they launched the WeNaija Youth Fest last weekend in Lagos.

The event which also marked the grand finale of the 2023 WeNaija campaign competition saw a 400-level student of the Federal University of Technology, Akuru,  Rita John, win N1 million for producing the  best skit for HPV.

The top five finalists won prizes totalling N5 million and internship opportunities that were up for grabs.  In her keynote address,  Bagudu challenged the youths to amplify the positive effects of the HPV vaccine and its benefits.

She said: “HPV vaccine is a preventive factor against cervical cancer which over 12,000 women in Nigeria are diagnosed with and over 60 percent, 8,000 of them die annually. These are figures that we know are grossly under-represented because of the weak healthcare system that we have and our data is not given a prominence or funded adequately.

“And we know that a lot more women are undiagnosed, untreated and even the girls are unvaccinated when it comes to cervical cancer. There is a lot of misinformation about the vaccine; they said it makes women sterile, and that they are not going to have babies and others.”

Pointing out that evidence and data was available to prove that such beliefs were untrue, she explained: “All my daughters have received the HPV vaccine and I recently became a grandmother. It didn’t stop my daughter from having a baby.

“I think misinformation is the main issue Lagos State had. We didn’t expect it at all with the level of education in the state, the strength of the healthcare system and with the amount of the funding.

“Lagos was one of the states that got everything, but when it came to acceptance and demand generation, we failed them.”

To the participants, she stated: “I want to ask you as a Change Agent to put more effort into all the content that you are creating, spreading the word, looking for evidence-based around, facts and not just some random person that will be telling you that it is going to make the girls infertile.

“All the countries that have been doing it are still growing and it is definitely not causing any of that.

“And we want the traditional and religious leaders a lot for this reason to try to dispel the myths that are often revolved around healthcare issues like this.

“So, I hope that by the time we come back next year, the vaccine has been done on an outreach basis but it’s going to be made into routine so that girls and boys can obtain it as part of their routine immunisation. We will see a much better figure and performance in Lagos state through the efforts that you all are going to put in,” she noted.

On her part, the Noisy Naija Paediatrician stated: “The idea of giving the skit content creators prizes to the tune of N1 million and laptops says that there is space for content creators to harness their creative skills to win prizes, earn money and also enlighten the public on the issues that are important.”

Speaking, the GM/CEO, of NSSF, Dr Fejiro Chinye-Nwoko said the programme was dedicated to reskilling and retooling creative Nigerian youth. She said the campaign leverages innovative avenues like Photography, Literature, and Video to mobilise, empower, and upskill the nation’s vibrant, tech-savvy, and creative youth.

“The 2023 WeNaija campaign which launched a national video content creation contest, ‘Awareness to Action,’ on October 11th, 2023 was focused on raising awareness about HPV and the HPV vaccine for girls aged 9-14 through impactful video content,” she said.

The Awareness to Action campaign ended with the WeNaija Youth Fest, “Content Creators to Change Makers”, which was attended by the participants of the WeNaija campaigns, along with qualified finalists showcasing their impactful videos.

The top 5 finalists win amazing prizes totaling 5 million Naira and internship opportunities at stake.

The event, with over 250 youths in attendance featured insightful capacity-building sessions for young advocates in health, film making, storytelling, and video content creation. This was led by influencers such as Kate Henshaw, The Noisy Naija Paediatrician, Lala Akindoju, Gift Israel among others.