Trust TV’s Abdulaziz Abdulaziz has won the Television category of the 17th Wole Soyinka Award for investigative reporting.
The documentary of Abdulaziz, who is the Deputy General Editor of Daily Trust, titled “Nigeria’s Banditry: The Inside Story”, won him the coveted award.
It is an account of the origin and extent of banditry that wreaked havoc in Northern Nigeria.
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Abdulaziz took risk to traverse dreaded bandit-controlled areas across the North West to present untold stories of banditry in Nigeria.
In the documentary done with the support of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), Abdulaziz spoke with victims, experts, and masterminds of banditry.
The documentary created a diversity of knowledge on a subject already saturated with dangerous conspiracy theories.
The Federal Government through the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) in August, imposed a fine of N5 million on Trust Television Network (Trust TV) over the documentary, a move that triggered nationwide outrage as activists and Civil Society groups criticised the government for targetting the media.
In 2018, he won the Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Journalist of the Year as well as Investigative Reporter of The Year (online) for exposing the National Youth Corps Scheme (NYSC) exemption certificate forgery of Kemi Adeosun, former Minister of Finance
Zainab Bala, also a Trust TV journalist, was highly commended by the organisers for her nomination.
