CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, MONDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER 2011: The Executive Director of Media Rights Agenda, Mr. Edetaen Ojo, was last night in Cape Town, South Africa, bestowed with an award for his role in the passage of Nigeria’s Freedom of Information Act early this year and his campaign for access to information across Africa.
The Award was conferred on him at the ongoing Pan African Conference on Access to Information (PACAI) in Cape Town and formally presented to him by Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Communication, Mr. Labaran Maku, on behalf of the conference organizers at an awards night and reception attended by about 1,000 delegates from all over the world.  Those in attendance included UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General, Mr. Janis Karklins; the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Mr. Frank la Rue; the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa, Advocate Pansy Tlakula; the Head of the Directorate for Information and Communication at the African Union Commission, Mrs. Habiba Mejri-Cheikh; parliamentarians, Information and Communication ministers and other senior government officials from different African countries, among others.
Mr. Ojo was one of the three recipients of the PACAI Awards at the ceremony.  Others were Mr. Alain Modoux, a former Assistant Director-General of UNESCO, for his role in the adoption of the Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press in Namibia on May 3, 1991 and his subsequent contribution to the proclamation of May 3 as World Press Freedom Day by the United Nations General Assembly; and Mr. Malcolm Joseph, Executive Director of the Center for Media Studies and Peace-Building (CEMESP) for his coordinating role in the campaign for Freedom of Information in Liberia, resulting in the passage of the first Freedom of Information law in West Africa by Liberia on September 16, 2010. 
The Working Group of the Windhoek+20 Coalition said Mr. Ojo was given the award for “his tireless struggles over 15 years in advancing media and information issues, culminating in Nigeria’s historic Freedom of Information Act in 2011.”
In the Award citation, the Group also expressed its appreciation to Mr. Ojo for “his leading part in developing the African Platform on Access to Information, the Declaration adopted at this Conference.”
It said:  “Your sterling efforts have inspired activists and stakeholders elsewhere in Africa to take forward the cause of information access in their own countries as well as on a continental basis”, adding that in these ways, he has “helped to give life to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that everyone shall enjoy the right to freedom of expression which includes the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas.”

For further information, please contact:
Tive Denedo
Director of Campaigns, Media Rights Agenda
Tel: +234 803 300 7820
E-mail:  tive@mediarightsagenda.net