Left to right: Professor Umaru Pate, chairman, governing board of CJID (in navy blue) and Professor Nosa Owens-Ibie, co-chairman, ACSPN Board of Trustees, in Abuja on Wednesday. The Association of Communication Scholars and Professionals of Nigeria (ACSPN) has inducted seven distinguished academics and two media leaders as Fellows of the Association, conferring its foremost professional and academic distinction for the first time in its 14-year history.
The new Fellows were formally admitted at the Association’s 14th Annual Conference in Abuja on Wednesday, 2 September, in recognition of “careers that have combined professional excellence with scholarship, ethical leadership, institutional service and sustained contributions to the development of journalism and communication,” according to the president of the association, Rotimi Williams Olatunji, a professor of public relations and advertising at Lagos State University.
Among this year’s Fellows is Umaru Pate, a distinguished media scholar and former Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Kashere, Gombe State. He is also the Chairman of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), a media innovation and technology think tank.
Others include Nosa Owens-Ibe, a former Vice Chancellor of Caleb University, Lagos State; Chinyere Stella Okuna, currently Deputy Vice Chancellor of Paul University, Awka, Anambra State; and ACSPN president, Mr Olatunji. The rest are two media leaders: Dapo Olorunyomi, Publisher of PREMIUM TIMES and Chief Executive Officer of CJID, and Lanre Idowu, a distinguished journalist, editor and author.
Announcing the honours, Mr Olatunji described Fellowship as more than an award for longevity or professional visibility, noting that this year’s honourees occupy a unique place in the history of ACSPN as its inaugural class of Fellows. “To become a Fellow of the Association is to enter a community of distinction and responsibility. Fellowship recognises not simply what an individual has achieved, but what that achievement has contributed